Silent Spirit
by Raven Aorla
Summary: We never dreamed that two girls with no fighting ability would save us all, we never thought that two friends could have such a bond, and we never knew that such a threat could overcome even death itself. OC Beginning of a series.
1. Default Chapter

Mrs. Amanda Withers, a mutant, known as Spy to her friends, has asked me to co-write, edit, and publish this account so that others may hear her story. I have met her only recently but she has become a very dear friend of mine. The story that follows is not a tale of her own life, but a memorial to someone else's, someone that I have never met. The person in question was named Myra Sing. Myra was also a mutant and student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, back in the dark days when mutants were subject to blatant hostility and prejudice. I became interested in writing this not only because I find what Spy has told me to be quite fascinating, but also will help illuminate an aspect of this period in history that is less known. The tales of the X-Men have become famous. I'm aware that there are even (somewhat exaggerated) movies about them. Though Myra was as strong as the X-Men, few people know now that she ever existed.  
  
I also volunteered to help with this project because I have also lost a best friend, and know what it feels like. We separated by distance, while Spy and Myra are separated by death, but both of our friends had a similar affect on our lives. My work on this story is for you, Caitlin, you who taught me to question reality, to dream, to believe what is not obvious, and to believe in myself.  
  
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank Raven Aorla for all her kind assistance. It means more to me than she will ever know, especially since she would probably rather be writing Lord of the Rings fanfiction instead. I am not a gifted writer, and at first didn't know how I would ever get this story published. It was Raven who suggested the domain of fanfiction, and presenting the story as if it was fiction, instead of actual events. We did this because few people are likely to believe me, because of the powers that Myra possessed.  
  
An anti-mutant activist (who has been tried and convicted for this murder) shot Myra a few weeks ago, even with the new amendment last year that promised mutants equal protection from the law, and punishment for people who discriminated against us based on our genetic makeup. This story takes place many years before Myra was killed, back in the days when if a mutant had been shot society would never know, and not care if they did. This period in history (I saw an updated high school textbook with a chapter about the Mutant Freedom Movement the other day) was at its full-blown strength only twelve years ago. Both of us were thirteen years old, and she had just arrived at Xavier's school. The teachers and students were still recovering from the shock of the plot to wipe out all mutants, an event that has been publicized and adapted to film.  
  
This story is about how Myra saved us from a peril that rose from the aftermath of that plot, how life was for young mutants then, and how I became one of the few people that was allowed to call her Myra. Everyone else called her S.S. or Silent Spirit. The reason for this codename was that one of the things that made her unique was that she was basically deaf and mute. I say basically because, though she couldn't speak to us, and she couldn't hear what everyone else did, she could hear and speak to other things. 


	2. First Impressions

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, not even the computer I'm using. Author's note: ~This will always be for thoughts.~ I'd rather use italics, but neither of us know how to upload this story without the italics disappearing.  
  
It was a Saturday morning in early October at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, known to the students as Mutant High, though there was an eighth grade for "early manifesters". I'd only been living here for a month, and still didn't have a roommate. My parents had been quite happy to send me to the school, along with all my important belongings, sell the house, and move so that I wouldn't ever be able to find them again. So much for family affection. Actually I saw a funny side to this, even on that first night, alone, which I spent crying. They thought I'd lose all contact with them, which showed how little they knew about my abilities, even thought they were so eager to be rid of them. You can never hide from a telepath-clairvoyant if she's bent upon finding you. I occasionally shut my eyes and projected my sight to the new house, sometimes tapping in to what they were thinking. I couldn't do that much more, though, because the teachers kept lecturing me about misuse of power every time they caught me at it.  
  
Besides, this morning I had plenty to do without spying on my family. I had an 800-word essay on the Ice Age that I had been putting off. I was going to do half that day, half the next. No sooner had I started than my history teacher, Miss Munro, whom I always thought of as Storm, knocked on the door. I knew it was her because a clairvoyant can see things without looking, so to speak. "Come in, Miss Munro," I said, not taking my eyes off my paper.  
  
Storm walked into the room, looking authoritative, beautiful and unearthly at the same time, as usual. She had always been my favorite teacher. "Working on the essay at the last minute, I see," she observed.  
  
"This isn't the last minute," I argued, still looking at the paper as if my vision was glued to it, "today is Saturday. The assignment is due on Monday." Not that I cared, but I enjoy debates.  
  
"That as may be, a new student arrived at the school at 5:00 this morning. She's going to be your new roommate."  
  
I finally turned around and looked at Storm. "Where is she now?" I asked.  
  
"The kitchen. Mr. Summers is with her, trying to make sure she doesn't eat too much. Professor Xavier talked to her earlier, and she told him that she hasn't eaten for three days, and very little before then. She might die of overeating, since she's been a runaway for two months, and near starvation the entire time."  
  
"Since the raid, you mean?" I hadn't been here then, but many students had told me stories about it, most of them conflicting.  
  
"Yes." The topic of those two days was still too painful for Storm. "She's one of those mutants that looks different that 'normal' humans, and apparently was afraid of being killed after the assassination attempt. I think it would be good if you went and introduced yourself. She's had a hard time, Amanda. You wouldn't really be talking, though. As a side effect of her power she can't hear or speak to any of us. The Professor said that your telepathy is good enough to converse mentally now."  
  
"Only if they're in the room." My telepathy wasn't as strong as my clairvoyance, but Professor Xavier was helping me work on it. "What *can* she do? What's her name?"  
  
"Her name is Myra Sing, but she prefers to be called Silent Spirit. I think it would be better if she explained her abilities to you herself." Storm walked out to the kitchen in question, the one where the students would go to grab a snack, then sit around and talk. I followed her.  
  
Sitting at the kitchen table, Mr. Summers (I didn't like him as much, mainly because he was always melancholy, so I always called him that) was gravely watching the newcomer, notepad and pen between them. The new girl was quite distinct in appearance. Okay, she looked like something that had been washed ashore. I saw her from the side. She was wearing a dirty, very badly ripped and torn windbreaker, a pair of jeans in a similar condition, as well as muddy and scuffed sneakers. Her left arm was in a cast and a sling. Even with a jacket on, you could tell that she was dangerously thin, not in the way models look, but in the way that people in newspaper articles about famine look. On the floor, next to the stool she was sitting on, was a backpack that was falling apart. There was a black case sticking out of it. This was not the main reason that made her look odd. Her hands and face were covered with short, soft-looking, dark gray fur. Her very short hair was silver, brighter than the silver hair that the elderly have, but shining like metal. It was a tangled mess, but still was striking. Her nails were the same shade of silver. She wore a pair of opaque sunglasses, the kind that wraps around your face so that no light can pass through unfiltered. It was not very bright in the kitchen, which made me think that her eyes were different, too. Silent Spirit was eating a sandwich very slowly, with great restraint, but with undisguised enjoyment, as if it was the best sandwich in the universe.  
  
"Thank you, Scott," Storm said. "Is she all right?"  
  
Mr. Summers looked up. "She's fine," he answered. "I wrote that she should try to pace herself, and she wrote back that she knew already and would. She started talking without any sound a few minutes ago."  
  
"WHAT?" I said.  
  
"Oh, hello Amanda. I was surprised as well, and she wrote that she was telling her mother that she didn't have to worry about her now."  
  
"Is that her power?" I asked. "She talks to dead people?" The idea scared me, but I believed it. Mr. Summers never joked around. Besides, it somehow seemed fitting that such a creepy looking person would be able to do something like that.  
  
"I need to talk to you, Scott," interrupted Storm. The two of them left, leaving me to introduce myself. I sat down across from her, took a deep breath, and entered her mind.  
  
~Hello, my name is Amanda, but call me Spy. I'm going to be your roommate.~ I began.  
  
She looked at me and smiled in such a friendly way that she didn't look like an alien any longer, more like a small child presented with a bicycle. ~Hi. They probably told you my name already. How many more people here are telepathic?~  
  
~Nobody else, besides the Professor. I'm not even a third as powerful as he is, but I'm also a clairvoyant. Why did you arrive so early, and not come to eat before now?~  
  
Her thoughts spoke of the relief she felt. ~Those two teachers found me last night, in Washington DC. I've become mostly nocturnal, since it was safer for me if I traveled at night. They sent me off to the infirmary first, to get my arm fixed up, get antiseptic for the cuts-you can't see them because of the fur, and to check to see if I was otherwise in one piece. Then Professor Xavier wanted to talk to me, since neither of the teachers could communicate with me. Then he wanted me to go take shower,~ she smiled softly, ~but I insisted on food. I was getting to the point where I kept hallucinating about food.~  
  
She was so honest and open that I couldn't feel nervous around her. ~Have you had enough? If you have I want to show you our room, Spirit. How did you break your arm?~  
  
~Sure.~ She made it sound like an honor. I noticed that she had ignored my second question. ~It's nice to be able to talk to someone who won't run away screaming,~ she continued. Instantly I felt guilty about my first impression of Silent Spirit. She seemed so amazed at being treated decently. I picked up her backpack, and she followed me to my, no, our, room. 


	3. Window to the Soul

Thank you for the reviews, everyone! And to shukuchi, I want you to know that I am currently unable to e-mail you because, throughout the entire city, NOBODY can access Hotmail. Argh! Also, shukuchi, please tell Caitlin to come and read this story.  
  
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Back in our room I noticed that new clothes had been spread out on the previously unoccupied bed. Storm was probably the one who had put them there. Somewhere in the building there must have been a large stash of clothes for new arrivals, since so many of them had nothing except what they were wearing. I put Spirit's backpack next to the bed. She looked around, then sank on to the bed as if she were overwhelmed.  
  
~Are you okay?~ I asked.  
  
Spirit looked at me reassuringly. ~I'll be all right. It's just that I'm extremely tired. On the way here I took a nap, but other than that I've been awake for twenty-six hours. No, really!~ I had been communicating disbelief. ~I probably have to take a shower first of all, though.~  
  
~Go ahead,~ I told her.  
  
~Thank you again,~ she thought back.  
  
While she was in there I worked on my essay, but at the same time I had to wonder about my new roommate. Several questions that I wanted to ask her floated around in my head. I have never been known as a tactful person, and it didn't occur to me that even someone as friendly as Silent Spirit might not want to discuss her life to a near stranger. She was in the shower for an awfully long time. Enjoying the hot water, I suppose. When she came out, in fresh clothes and combed hair, I could see the exhaustion that had previously been masked by dirt. I had also not observed some of her physical characteristics, since I had been trying to get used to her mutations. Now that they less surprised me, she looked distinctly Asian. Spirit was rather small for a teenager. If she didn't have an air of maturity and suffering you might have mistaken her for a ten-year-old. Her face was fine-boned, and her hair was not very thick. If everyone had gray fur, silver nails, and silver hair she would've looked normal, as well as reasonably pretty.  
  
A thought burst out of my mind without my meaning it to. ~Why do you have to wear sunglasses? Is their something wrong with your eyes?~  
  
Silent Spirit sat down on the floor. She didn't seem to have enough energy to stand. ~Not really *wrong* ,~ she answered, hugging her knees, ~though some people thought it was. It can be a good thing, too. Draw the curtains and turn off the lamp, and I'll show you what they look like.~  
  
I did what she asked. A little light seeped in from under and between the curtains, so I could still see Spirit in front of me. Feeling self- conscious, I sat down on the floor with her. She took the sunglasses off very slowly, and held them in her left hand, which fortunately was not broken along with the arm. ~This is the mutation that scares people the most,~ Silent Spirit thought to me. I could see why. Her eyes were black, completely black. Spirit's eyes had no irises or whites, just enormous pupils that swallowed up everything. They seem to absorb light, and I couldn't see my reflection in them. They looked like the void of space and the eyes of aliens in bad horror movies. Fear emanated from those eyes, fear of the unknown, fear of loneliness, fear of death. In that moment I knew she had faced every one of those trials, and had survived. For one second I wished she wasn't there, and I wanted those eyes to go away and leave me alone.  
  
Then I 'heard' her think, ~Please, don't let her be like so many others. I want someone who can see beyond the terror, and look deeper. Will anyone do that? I've been looking for someone all this time, who will find the real me. It's a risk, testing her like this so soon, but I can't hide, I never could hide. If nobody is left who will know me for who I am, I think I'll follow my parents, who do.~ I don't think she meant that thought for me. It was deeper within her mind than the thoughts I'd been able to pick up before. But the thought broke the spell.  
  
I could look pass the void, into her true spirit. I saw loneliness, and hundreds of nights filled with tears. Yet there was also an unflagging love for the world, and faith in humanity that I didn't have. In her life she had laughed and sang, had been kind to others even when they pushed her away and rejected her, and had always hoped for the day when she would be understood. I could see her soul, and it was beautiful. Of course she wasn't perfect, but she was certainly not a freak. Perhaps I'm becoming too sentimental, but it's an amazing thing to have a revelation like that. I couldn't have said or thought anything then if my life were at stake, so I told her about what I now knew the best way I could. I hugged her.  
  
She cried without any sound that I could hear. When I let go I saw her mouth move, shaping the words "Mom, Dad, someone living cares about me, too." At least, she told me later that was what she said. Spirit laboriously crept to her bed and climbed onto it, careful not to move her broken arm. She put her sunglasses back on, and I pulled open the curtains again. ~Is it okay for me to let the light back in?~ I asked.  
  
~Yes,~ she thought back. ~Please wake me up after two hours. I want to try getting used to sleeping at night again. You probably have homework to do.~ A final sleepy thought came, ~I want to talk to you when I'm not so tired. I think we are friends, now.~ 


	4. Mysteries, Hints, and an Odd Lunch

I, Raven, am sorry about the shortness of the previous chapters. Spy (and a few others) has hinted that she would like to have more of the story published quicker, and some of my readers might also have thought so. I am mainly working by Spy's reminisces, and she also reads over my work to make sure they are as close as possible to what happened. This chapter will be MUCH longer than the first three.  
  
I, Spy (no pun intended) wish to say that the books mentioned in this chapter are not mine, though they are my life. The only reason that they are mentioned is to give you a clearer picture of my personality, and it's contrast with Myra's.  
  
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I finished all my homework long before Spirit woke up again. It helped that I didn't have to move a muscle to research my paper, since I could easily project myself to the Ice Age exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History. In fact, I was able to write all 800 words in an hour and a forty- five minutes. Having nothing better to do, I decided to unpack Silent Spirit's things for her. Yes, looking back I realize that this was very impolite, but the thought never occurred to me at the time.  
  
The room had been designed for sharing, being perfectly symmetrical. There were two single beds, two windows, two desks, two lamps, and two chairs. My half of the room was closer to the door, but Spirit's was closer to the bathroom. The carpet was dark green and the walls were a creamy white. Her side had nothing personal except for her previously mentioned backpack, but mine had a bookshelf full of mysteries and horror (two genres that to me have always seemed very closely related), along with a poster of "The Gashleycrumb Tinies", a frankly ancient and morbid alphabet poem by Edward Gorey. Have you heard of it? The first three lines are:  
  
"A is for Amy who fell down the stairs,  
  
"B is for Basil, assaulted by bears,  
  
"C is for Clara, who wasted away,"  
  
It continues on, through the entire alphabet and a grimly funny illustration for each untimely demise. No, I was not a Goth and am not one now. I just have a very dark and twisted sense of humor. I was very much a rabid mystery reader as well, with the occasional ghost story for variety. They were all there. Books by Agatha Christie and reliable old Sherlock Holmes stories. I had Edgar Allan Poe, who is less known for mysteries than horror, though at one time he was known as the father of the mystery novel. I loved the little known but hilarious Meg Lanslow mysteries by Donna Andrews. Various thrillers from the late twentieth century were there. I had little patience with popular horror, the kind with swamp monsters lunging around, serial killers, and loads of blood and guts. I preferred classics of horror such as "Dracula" and "Frankenstein", and stories by H.P. Lovecraft and John Bellairs. Stephen King was good, but I usually didn't like his language. What I wanted in a story was supernatural creepiness, with drama and mystery as major factors.  
  
This mindset was a sharp contrast to what evidences of her personality that I found in Silent Spirit's belongings. The black case poking out proved to contain a clarinet, or was it an oboe? I had never learned the difference, having no musical talent whatsoever. She had a clear folder containing a massive amount of sheet music, both vocal and instrumental. On a more practical side there was a box of bandages and bottle of antiseptic, both nearly empty. Deeper within was a wallet containing twenty dollars and three photos. There was also an ID card, with Spirit in the same pair of sunglasses, looking forlorn. The card said:  
  
Tall Cedars Orphanage, Washington DC. Name: Myra "SS" Sing. Sex: F Birth date: November 18, 2005 SPECIAL INFORMATION Powers: Unknown, have not yet manifested. Temperament: Compliant and quiet, but deceitful. Should have this card at all times. If found outside of Tall Cedars, notify the orphanage.  
  
I bristled at the "Special Information". It reminded me of identification descriptions used for slave papers in pre-Civil War times. "Deceitful"? I couldn't reconcile that with my acquaintance with Silent Spirit.  
  
I looked at the other pictures, which were less infuriating, though somehow just as sad. There was a school photo of a Hispanic girl about eleven years old. Scribbled on the back were the words, "Lisa. No matter where you go, I will find you, if it takes a thousand years." I recognized the line from a song I had once heard. The sentence gave me a flash of clairvoyance, one of the involuntary visions of past and future that I sometimes have. There was a car driving away, with a tearstained face at the window. "Myra!" the face kept screaming, "Myra! Myraaaaaaaaa!" It must have been a piece of her past. I flashed back to the present, a little dizzy.  
  
The second picture was older. It was a family of three, Spirit looking like a four-year-old, so she was probably five or six at the time, and wearing a blue dress and cute red-rimmed sunglasses. There was one adult, presumably her dad. He was decent looking, with black hair and ordinary skin with a faint tinge of yellow. Or *did* he look normal? He was wearing sunglasses, too. Did they have the same eyes? There was a boy in the picture, whose age I guessed at six or seven. He was completely normal looking, and was a miniature version of the father, minus the sunglasses. On the back, in tiny printing, it said, "Dad, Charles Sing, 1971-2011. I'll never forget you. Ryan, 2003-? Are you still alive? Where are you? Me, age five. Who would've known what would happen next?" Not very cheerful stuff. It was a mystery, and I felt this would be a fairly tragic one.  
  
The last photo showed a fairly pretty woman in her early thirties, with black hair, normal dark brown eyes, and delicate, fine features. Though she wasn't gorgeous, or even very beautiful, kindness and sensitivity seemed to radiate from her face. She looked exactly like how Silent Spirit would look as an adult, if she hadn't been born a mutant. Another message was written on the back. "Mother, Lily Sing, 1970-November 18, 2005. I'm so sorry." Spirit's mother must have died giving birth to her, I decided. I carefully put the pictures back in the wallet, and set the wallet on the desk.  
  
There were four small books in the bag as well: an old paperback copy of "Watership Down"; a leather-bound collection of inspirational poetry; a diary that even I had the tact to leave alone; and a book called "Peace to the Mind, Peace to the Body, Peace to the Spirit: How to bring serenity and calm into your life." I arranged them neatly on her shelf. She must have been unable to part with them.  
  
Besides the Band-Aids, the practical items were a completely dry water bottle, a road map of the U.S., and the remains of a packet of water purification pills. There was also a pen, a bottle of aspirin, a few remaining sanitary pads (hey, she was running away for two months, right?), and a roll of duct tape, which is said to solve everything.  
  
I didn't have to wake Silent Spirit up, since she woke on the exact two- hour mark. She yawned without a sound, rubbed her eyes, and asked wistfully, ~Did you hear me yawn?~  
  
~No,~ I told her.  
  
She sighed, again without a sound. ~Oh, dear. I must be completely inaudible to other living people. Can you hear this?~ She clapped her hands. I still couldn't hear anything, and told her so.  
  
~Oh well," she thought regretfully, ~I suppose everyone has a price to pay. What time is it? Can you show me around the mansion? There's a whole lot I want to know about this place.~  
  
~It's time for lunch. I'll give you the tour after eating.~ There were many things I wanted to know as well, but they would have to wait.  
  
Everyone gathered in the main cafeteria for lunch. It was not a really huge cafeteria, the student body being around seventy or so, giving it a friendly and homey air. I hadn't made any good friends yet, but was on decent terms with everyone, so could I usually grab a seat somewhere. This time I saw two empty seats at the end of a table, next to the "Famous Couple", Rogue and Iceman. Their renown around the school came mostly from Rogue, due to her kidnapping in the "Liberty Island Incident", and because Wolverine, towards whom all the teens felt a mixture of fear and awe (and several girls were star-struck over), was her protector and mentor. The aforementioned Wolverine was still lingering around the mansion, wavering between becoming a PE teacher or wandering off again to find more of his past.  
  
The teachers sat at their own table, talking about various school matters. The exception was Mr. Wagner, whom the students called Kurt outside of class (He taught the required Geography class, as well as tutoring in German, Latin and various other European languages which for some reason he was completely fluent in), and who was on lunch duty. All the teachers took their turn patrolling around the tables at meals to ensure nobody was setting anyone else on fire, or turning them to stone by mistake, or anything like that. Many of them liked to stop and talk with the students as well.  
  
"Do you mind if we sit here?" I asked Iceman. He and Rogue were sitting across from each other.  
  
He looked at me for a few seconds before recognizing me. "Not at all, Spy," he replied. I sat down next to him with my tray of spaghetti and apple juice, and Spirit, after a cautious look at Rogue, sat down with her salad, chicken, and milk, and started straight in.  
  
Rogue looked at Silent Spirit with mild surprise at her appearance. Emotions are the easiest part of thoughts to detect, and even a telepath as feeble as I was at the time feels them without others noticing. "Hi," she said in a friendly way, with her faint trace of a Southern accent, " are you new here?"  
  
Spirit, of course, couldn't hear her, so I answered for her. "Yes," I told Rogue, "but she can't hear you and you won't be able to hear her. Side effect of her power." ~They're asking about you,~ I told my roommate.  
  
~Tell them they can call me SS, and that I'm sorry I can't hear them,~ she thought, looking at Rogue again with an apologetic smile. In order to keep eating, I transferred Spirit's statements to Iceman and Rogue's minds. The conversation thus continued with the two of them speaking, and the two of us thinking. When we explained Myra's abilities, Iceman's jaw dropped.  
  
He sounded stunned, as well. "She talks to dead people," he said slowly, as if he were hoping that he had heard wrong.  
  
"And she can't hear anything else," I added.  
  
"There's no-it's-it's impossible!" he stammered.  
  
Rogue stared at him. "Bobby, using that logic it's also impossible to blast ice from your hands, and it's impossible to suck the life out of people you touch."  
  
That shut him up.  
  
~They can do that? Amazing.~ thought Spirit, awed. It 'sounded' like a wide- eyed statement, but since I couldn't see her eyes I had no way of knowing whether it was or not. I started to choke on my juice.  
  
Iceman continued to protest. "But-I mean, does that mean there's an afterlife?"  
  
"Of course zere's an afterlife, Bobby." Iceman nearly jumped. Kurt had appeared behind him. "Hello," he said pleasantly to Silent Spirit, "are you zhe new student? My name is Kurt Vagner, but in zhe Munich Circus they called me zhe Incredible Nightcrawler." Everyone had heard his spiel a hundred times, but he still introduced himself that way.  
  
"She can't hear you," I told him, "she can't hear-" My explanation was cut short by SS turning around and bombarding me with mental hysteria. This surprised me, since even though our blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, pointy- eared, devil-tailed, and fanged teacher sometimes inspired this reaction, he didn't look much stranger than Spirit did herself.  
  
~He was the assassin! He was on the news, and that was what made me have to leave, and it was ALL HIS FAULT!~ she repeated over and over so 'loudly' that I had to break the mental connection for a second before the force of it knocked me out. I reflexively put my hands over my ears my ears. I also put a hand on her arm to calm her down.  
  
~He was innocent, Spirit,~ I told her, ~he was being controlled by a drug that forced him to do it. It was all a plot to generate anti-mutant sentiment.~  
  
~Are you telling the truth?~ She looked me in the eye.  
  
~Yes,~ I promised her.  
  
"Did somezhing happen?" asked Kurt innocently.  
  
Spirit took a deep breath, producing from her pocket a pen and the same notepad she had been using with Mr. Summers. She wrote a message on it and handed it to Kurt. He read it and nodded to her with a warm, though rather pointy-toothed, smile. "You have a very good friend," he told me. "Vill you two come to my classroom with me? Lunch is nearly over."  
  
As we deposited our trays and left the cafeteria, I heard Rogue ask nobody in particular, "What was that?" 


	5. The Future and the Past

A note from Spy about this chapter: I personally thought that including Myra's and my first timetable together was unnecessary, but Raven insisted that it would help achieve our other motive in publishing this story. She thinks that putting it in will help add to the picture of what life was like for a mutant student, and how the classes were not all that different from anyone else's schedule. I let her stick it in because she writes better than I do, but if it bores you, just skip it. You won't miss out on the actual narrative.  
  
A note from Raven Aorla: I hope nobody accuses me of giving Myra a Mary- Sueish past. If anyone becomes inclined to think so, let me point out that Spirit was not perfect. She did not make anyone fall in love with her until a much later date, and then with someone who was not part of the X-Men movies. I would also like to remind you that almost every mutant at the time had painful events in their personal history, those who could remember it at any rate.  
  
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As we followed Kurt to his classroom I mentally filled Spirit in about various aspects of the school. She made no comment except when I told her about learning how to use our powers, which produced the sober reflection, ~I really need that.~ Then her mental tone changed to more cheerful. ~The teachers sound like nice people.~  
  
~Sometimes.~ I gave her some mental images of what I saw when, during my first month here, I was caught spying on Wolverine when he was singing and dancing to a CD of the score of "West Side Story" in his bedroom. ~Mr. Summers saw me grinning in class with the glazed expression I have when I'm using my clairvoyance, and I wouldn't tell him when he asked me where I had gone. Then he sent me to Professor Xavier, who pried it out of my brain. I was given two detentions, one for "improper use of abilities" and the other for "not paying attention in class and not admitting to misbehavior".~ The Prof. had sounded stern, though his thoughts were rather amused. ~Wolverine didn't appreciate it. He threatened to rip me into pieces if I ever did that again, but that hadn't kept the news from getting out.~  
  
She responded appropriately with a silent chuckle. ~No wonder people call you Spy. Do you do that sort of thing often?~  
  
I just smiled knowingly, for by then we had reached the classroom. There were untidy stacks of papers on his desk, maps and posters promoting geography and foreign languages on the walls, a whiteboard, and the student's desks. Typical classroom décor, except for the chair bolted to the ceiling. Seeing Spirit's puzzled look, I explained that Mr. Wagner occasionally taught classes upside down. ~He hangs on with his tail,~ I added. ~I've never seen him get a headache.~  
  
"Zhe Professor asked me to speak to you two about how Spirit vill manage classes, since she cannot hear," Kurt said, rummaging through the papers. I transferred everything he said to Spirit, and told Kurt what she responded.  
  
"Well," I said, "I was thinking that if I was in the same classes with S.S. I could transmit what I heard to her mind. I've been doing that so far. Will that work?" Spirit nodded in approval as she climbed onto one of the student desks. It took her a little longer than usual on account of her broken arm.  
  
He must have found the paper he was looking for, since he stopped searching and sat on his desk, facing us. "Zhat vould be fine," he agreed. "Are you sure you can manage it, Amanda? Because sometimes-"  
  
"I know, I know," I interrupted, "I don't always pay attention. But I would if Spirit needed me to!" Suddenly this had become very important to me.  
  
Mr. Wagner said soothingly, "No need to be anxious. I am certain helping her shall be a great motivation for you to focus more." I relaxed. "I have Spirit's schedule here for her. I believe Professor Xavier had similar ideas as you, since you both are in zhe same classes, except for Elective, and you can be in the same class for zhat if you vish."  
  
S.S. beamed, which made me feel truly accepted by her, since she was just as happy as I was. ~Could you hand me the schedule, Spy?~ she asked.  
  
I took it from Kurt and put it in a position where both Spirit and I could see the piece of paper. I still have that agenda to this day. It says:  
  
8:00-9:00 Humanities (English and History) w/ Ms. Munro  
  
9:05-10:00 Geography w/ Mr.Wagner  
  
10:05-11:00 Beginning Algebra w/ Mr. Summers  
  
11:05-12:00 Science w/ Professor Xavier  
  
12:05-12:35 Lunch  
  
12:40-1:40 Special Abilities Training and Ethics w/ Professor Xavier  
  
1:45-2:45 Physical Education w/ Logan  
  
2:50-3:30 Elective  
  
Possible choices for Elective:  
  
Assisted Study w/ any subject and any teacher  
  
European Language (German, French, Latin, or Swedish) w/ Mr. Wagner  
  
Exploring Technology w/ Mr. Summers  
  
Conservation Club w/ Ms. Munro  
  
Self-defense w/ Logan  
  
Great Literature w/ Professor Xavier  
  
Electives are for one semester, with the exception of European Language, which is an entire year and must be taken for at least two years to achieve fluency in your chosen language. Speak to the teacher involved in the class you have decided upon about the particulars of each elective. If you wish to change the class you are in speak to Professor Xavier.  
  
"You don't have to decide now, Spirit, only do so by tomorrow evening," said Kurt as we read the paper. He continued, "There was anozher reason why I asked for you to come here. Since zhere aren't many people here who look different as well as have powers-"  
  
~So you want to talk about our common experiences,~ finished my friend. I told Kurt what she'd thought.  
  
"All I'm saying is," he had me tell her, "if you vant to talk, I vill listen."  
  
Spirit brought up her feet to the table and hugged her knees with her right arm, meditatively scrachting the fur on her broken one. ~Actually, I've wanted for a long time to talk to someone who also has been through life- long prejudice because of his or her genes. I don't mind Spy hearing about it either, because I can tell that we are going to become very good friends.~ I gave her a sort of one-armed sideways hug to thank her, being careful not to hurt her injured bones. ~There isn't much to say, really, that you won't already know, Mr. Wagner. Spy told me that gypsies who pulled you out of a river raised you, then you joined the circus and became an acrobat. People would've made fun of you, and some might have tried to hurt you, those who weren't afraid, that is.~ I could tell that S.S. knew the truth of her last sentence all too well.  
  
I told Kurt what she'd thought. He just nodded gravely and waved his tail around.  
  
My silvery roommate continued, ~I was very lucky, in the sense that my parents loved me. I knew my dad did, anyway, but never knew firsthand how my mother felt until,~ for some reason she stroked the cast on her arm, ~my powers manifested. I had always felt rather guilty, because she died when I was born.~  
  
"I'm sorry," said our ever-compassionate teacher.  
  
~No need to be. I don't feel bad about it anymore, ever since I've heard firsthand from her that she doesn't blame me. That made all the difference in the world,~ Spirit responded after I transferred his sympathy to her. ~ And at least I had my father and one brother, two years older than me. My dad was a mutant too, but nobody knew except us and one or two of his friends. His mutation was rather mild, which was the ability to see in the dark, both normally, in infrared, in ultraviolet, and in pola-pol-you know, that thing that polarized sunglasses show you. The drawback was that normal daylight was too bright for him, so he always had to wear sunglasses. He told people that he had some sort of eye problem.~ She touched her sunglasses. ~My eyes don't see in infrared and that other stuff, but I do see in the dark, and have to wear these all the time during the day. My eyes look just like his.~  
  
"She showed me them," I said to Kurt when I'd finished "interpreting", "they're just huge pupils, no irises or whites. I must say they scared me a bit at first."  
  
"I never knew vhy I had golden eyes," he said, "they don't seem to do anything."  
  
~Just coloring, I guess,~ stated Silent Spirit. ~I have silver hair that doesn't seem to do me any good, though I do like the color. Tried dying it once, along with cutting off some of the fur, in an attempt to look "normal", but I found out that my skin is gray, too, and my hair falls out if it's dyed.~ Her thoughts assumed a detached hue. ~A supervisor at the orphanage once insisted that my eyes could get used to the light if I stopped wearing glasses, and hid them. But I cried so hard and kept squinting and bumping into things so much that he gave them back.~  
  
"That was so mean!" I said aloud, forgetting that I hadn't told Kurt what she'd thought yet.  
  
When I did, he asked, "Vhat happened to your family?"  
  
My friend's chest moved as if she'd sighed. ~ One night when I was five years old, my night-light in my bedroom was malfunctioning, and it set the curtains on fire. I woke up, grabbed my wallet that was on my bedside table and contained all my money, all ten dollars of it, and ran to my dad's room, woke him, and he and I got Ryan, my brother. We were running out, when Ryan remembered that he left his pet guinea pig in his bedroom, and bolted back in before we could stop him. Dad pushed me out the door, and told me to call 911 at the telephone booth at the corner. He went in after my brother. Since the neighbors didn't like me I ran to the telephone booth instead of asking for their help, and called the fire department like my dad had taught me how, since I was four. When the firemen came they asked me some questions, but I could tell that my appearance put them off. I never saw Dad or Ryan come back out.~  
  
I sympathetically kneaded her shoulder while I told Mr. Wagner about her experience. I could sense that he was also felt compassion, and transmitted the feeling. Spirit smiled gratefully and continued. ~A few days later, after my dad's will had been examined, I was sent to the county orphanage. As guardian he had named a friend who turned out to not be willing to take me in because I was a mutant. Tall Cedars was the name of the orphanage. It kept me mainly because a social worker took interest in my "case", and I was never shown to visitors or allowed to be seen in public, all because of how I looked.~ As she thought those words, images flashed through my mind of each event she glossed over. All her life, except from her family, she was greeted with suspicion and fear. When people discovered she couldn't hurt them, they hated her all the same for what she might be able to do in the future.  
  
~I had one friend in the world then. Her name was Lisa. She looked beyond this,~ Spirit pulled out a strand of her hair, ~and stood up for me. She listened to me complain, even though it must have been REALLY boring. Lisa was my outlet for when I wanted to cry or throw things because I felt everything was so unfair. She helped me redo my homework if someone else ripped it up and shared her lunch with me if someone stole mine. When other kids insulted or attacked me, she'd tell them to leave me alone. Lisa even gave me presents every birthday and Christmas, and I made things for her, since I wasn't allowed to go to the store. Naturally she became extremely unpopular, but she once told me that she didn't want to be liked by jerks anyway. We were friends ever since my first week there. Shortly after I was twelve, they took her away. I woke up one morning, and I couldn't find her. I ran out in time to see a car drive out of the orphanage grounds, and I heard a voice screaming my name. She was the only one there who called me Myra.~  
  
Spirit buried her face in her hands. I did my "interpreting", then my roommate raised her head again and went on. ~I really sank low after that. I was just miserable. Nobody ever told me where Lisa went. I had a backpack hidden in my bedroom that had my most precious possessions, and a survival kit, inside it, in case I ever needed to run away. Then the day came, with the assassination attempt. It wasn't Mr. Wagner's fault, really, I was bound to leave sooner or later. I had a vague idea of finding some more mutants, wherever they were, and staying with them. Or with anyone who would let me. The night that my powers manifested,~ again that wince and stroking of her cast, ~I formed a new goal.  
  
~For my parents said that Ryan wasn't dead. My dad dragged Ryan to the window and dropped him out in the hope that the fall wouldn't kill him, and that he would by safe from the smoke and flames. He suffocated shortly afterwards~ I realized that this sounded really weird to me, her account of hearing from her father about his death, ~but my brother only sustained a head injury. When the firefighters found him he still was alive, though unconscious and badly burned. My parents have watched both of us grow up, but they cannot pinpoint where he is, because location has ceased to mean anything to them. They know for certain though, either from the fall or repressed memories, he doesn't remember a single thing in his life before he woke up in a hospital. Then I thought I'd somehow try to find him, but then I was picked up,~ she smiled gratefully again, ~by two of the teachers here. I am going to look for him, though, and someday I will find him.~ Her mind filled with determination, and I felt that she truly would.  
  
After telling Kurt all this I got no more information from my friend. After a few minutes he said to Silent Spirit, "I am alvays ready to listen to you. I discovered when I vas younger how important it can be to be listened to, when the world is prejudiced against you for no good reason."  
  
"Thank you," I said, as Spirit also thought, ~Thank you.~ at the same time. 


	6. Any Other Girls

How do I remember that day so vividly? Aside from the fact that a side benefit of telepathy is fantastic memory (though there are some things I'd rather forget, I can tell you), it was also an important day. I learned so much about Spirit in that one day, and now that she is gone, its significance is deepened even further.  
  
The following weeks slipped by rapidly, with the usual school routine. Not even a single world-domination plan that the teachers had to prevent disrupted our lives. For a while we were like any other teenagers at a boarding school, becoming fast friends and learning more about each other. Deep friendship is something that is acquired through scattered moments building upon each other, I believe. Many of these events revealed new facets of her personality to me, some I liked, and some I didn't.  
  
I recall an incident very early in that period that impressed the school a great deal. You'd think that SS would hear about the school's most dearly departed on the day she arrived, since a few teachers were still moping, but somehow it slipped by her. In her first class with Mr. Summers, the first occasion she had for me to raise my hand on her behalf was to ask him if he'd like Spirit to act as a go-between for him and the late Jean Gray, whom she had been talking to. She eventually ended up writing letters on Dr. Gray's behalf to all the teachers who missed the former X-Woman. I pestered her to tell me what the notes said, but she refused.  
  
~It's between her and them, and you better not read my mind for it, Spy,~ she kept insisting. ~Even I am trying to forget the messages.~  
  
When word got out of this use of her powers, all the students with deceased parents were beating a path to our dorm. I found this rather annoying, since it was hard to get peace and quiet at the school in any case, but Silent Spirit was always willing to do what they asked.  
  
~Why do you always talk for them?~ I asked her one day when her studying for a test had been interrupted five times. Yes, I was quite selfish at the time.  
  
I couldn't see her eyes, of course, but I knew from my telepathy that if I could, she'd be giving me an I'll-forgive-you-because-you're-my-best-friend look. ~I know what it's like for them,~ she answered simply. ~By the way,~ she added, ~could you find my green sweater for me? I've no idea where it went.~  
  
~In the cafeteria,~ I replied, "seeing" it with my clairvoyance.  
  
She was good at stifling arguments that way. A more peaceful, artistic, and poetic person I had never met. It seemed like Spirit's other best friend was her clarinet. For some reason, playing it was the only sound that she could produce that both she and other living people could hear. According to her, the dead didn't find it too bad either. Spirit was quite a good player, really. She managed to overcome her broken arm by propping it up in the right position, and keeping it very still while her fingers manipulated the instrument. Before her hearing had changed she could play by ear, and she could still play written music. Reams and reams of sheet music she had, as well as what seemed like hundreds of songs by heart. She loved singing as well, even though it was inaudible to everyone alive except herself. Often SS would spend hours writing her own music and lyrics. I enjoyed her playing, but some days she didn't know when to stop, and sometimes would even insist on me listening to one more song. Then I'd get annoyed with her.  
  
I didn't get annoyed with her very much, and usually the irritants weren't all that important anyhow. Most of her faults involved her being oblivious, and rather dismissive, of my own personality problems. A situation was a problem for a while was her getting up incredibly early in the morning. The sounds of her showering always woke me up, and I could never fall asleep again. I have never been a morning person. And Spirit would add insult to injury by being so unbearably PERKY in the morning, fully dressed when I was still in bed. Eventually we agreed that if I kept my dirty clothes from spilling over to her side of the room, she wouldn't shower until I woke up, and would restrain her enthusiasm until about noon. Another point of argument was my affection for telling her about my horror novels.  
  
~Spy,~ she pleaded one day, ~it's bad enough to hear ghosts all the time, I don't want to READ about them as well. Can you imagine having your great- great-great-great grandmother lecturing you about how she thinks a girl should be leaving the books to the boys? Or reading about the Civil War, and getting a Confederate soldier telling you that the history books are definitely slanted against them? No need to make up stories about monsters when you've got fur and bug eyes.~ Bitter? Felt that way to me, too.  
  
It's really hard to argue with a friend who's several inches shorter and at least ten pounds lighter than you, who also has a broken arm. While changing for PE every day, I saw that her ribs were disappearing from view, which I was glad of. She was still tiny, though. Spirit was excused from physical activity by virtue of her injury and still recovering from malnutrition, but Wolverine wanted her to change anyway. While we played volleyball, our unit at the time, she kept score. I was a bit jealous of her skinniness, as I was of every other thin girl in the school. Not that I was fat, but being on the heavier side of average weight is torturous for most thirteen year old girls. When I was moaning about my body-image one day, I discovered that my friend wasn't satisfied with her appearance either. Usually teenage girls refuse to admit that their peers are probably just as dissatisfied with themselves as they are.  
  
I distinctly remember, one day, SS saying, ~You look fine to me, Spy. At least you've got, well, you know, a chest.~ Her good arm tugged at her sweater with loathing. At the time we were lounging in one of the living rooms of the mansion. Various other teens were playing board games, flirting, chatting, etc., but naturally our conversation was just between the two of us.  
  
~Aw, c'mon,~ I protested, ~you're just growing slowly. You'll look fantastic by the time you're sixteen, I'm certain.~  
  
Unconvinced, she replied, ~How on earth would YOU know?~ I could feel her black eyes boring into me through her sunglasses. Before thinking my statement out clearly, I told her, ~To start with, you know that the Professor is helping me to see bits of the future. And secondly, you look just like your mom, except for your coloring, and she looked great in her picture. Whoops.~  
  
That was the first time that I found out that Spirit's fur would bristle when she got angry.  
  
~YOU WENT THROUGH MY STUFF???~ she screamed mentally, whacking me with a sofa cushion. Everyone else in the room of course didn't know why I was being attacked with pillows, but first the guys, then most of the girls, considered this an excuse to begin a giant pillow fight. It was quite fun until Spirit's glasses were knocked off.  
  
~Spy! Tell them to stop for a second, please! Too bright too bright too bright too bright!~ Her thoughts whirled around like a spinning top. I caught a glimpse of her in the tumult. She was crouching on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut, and her right hand alternating between groping for her glasses and covering her eyes. Her silver hair looked like the proverbial hurricane had passed through it.  
  
I took a deep breath and yelled, "STOP!" at the top of my voice, not expecting them to listen. They did, however. Froze, in fact. "I need to get SS's glasses, everyone," I announced. "Her eyes can't stand this much light." I concentrated on their shape and location for a few seconds. "They're under the T.V," I said. "Could somebody on that side of the room hand them over?" A boy about 14, I think, handed them to me. I couldn't place him for a moment, but then I remembered that he was a shy, quiet guy, known as Techie. He was a new kid with the ability to manipulate all machines in really sophisticated ways. Typical computer nerd type. Sort of person who could program an alarm to play "Happy Birthday" BEFORE his powers manifested, if he wanted to. I don't mean "nerd" as an insult, being a weirdo bookworm myself, when I say "nerd" it's a compliment.  
  
"Um, these are them, right?" he mumbled.  
  
"Yeah," I confirmed. "Thanks a ton." I returned them to Spirit. ~Here they are,~ I informed her unnecessarily. She took them and put them on, her tension relaxing. Seeing that nothing else was going to happen, the others went back to their previous activities. "And Spirit thanks you too," I added. Techie was still there.  
  
"There's, um, a dent in it," he said with much effort, "I can fix it if she wants."  
  
"She'd rather not," I told him after asking Silent Spirit, "normal daylight is too much for her eyes to handle. If you cared to at midnight, sure, but not now."  
  
To my surprise he took me seriously, even a little eager. "I could do that. On, um, a weekend night, I guess."  
  
I laughed. "I was joking! But thank you for offering." Spirit and I sat down again, even though the cushions were all over the place. My friend was busy putting her hair into a state of decency. I detected enormous embarrassment from Techie as he sat down next to me. He looked at his shoes.  
  
~Spirit, I'm sorry I went through your wallet. You know I'm nosy,~ I apologized to my ruffled friend.  
  
She did a sort of half-smile. ~Because you got the pillow fight to stop for me, I forgive you. But you need to work on minding your own business more. You know I prefer to keep some things private.~ Her right hand stroked the cast on her arm. Spirit still ignored all my questions about how her arm broke, something I found maddening. I hadn't realized that it annoyed her when I asked, since she usually guarded her emotions so well. Except about touchy subjects, such as her family. After she had told Nightcrawler about them, not a word on the subject since.  
  
"Er, why did, um, SS start the fight?" I heard a voice. I turned around and realized that it was Techie, who was now pushing his glasses up his nose for about the sixth time.  
  
"Oh, you know her name?" I asked, feeding the conversation to Spirit the whole time.  
  
He turned pink. "She's, uh, very recognizable. And you're called Spy, right?"  
  
"Right. I know that your code name's Techie, but what do you like to be called?"  
  
"You can, um, call me Jim if you want." The poor guy looked poised to flee. "My name's Jeremy Withers." Spirit let out a giggle as loud as a silent laugh could get. That had the effect of tongue-tying him completely when he saw her shaking.  
  
~Sorry,~ she thought to me, ~I really feel sorry for him. It's just he's so flustered about talking to you!~ I had been thinking along similar lines.  
  
"Look," I said bluntly, "you can stop blushing and stuttering. Spirit and I am not going to bite you. And we're happy to chat with you. Relax! I know you're still getting adjusted to the school, but you're going to have a very hard time making friends here if you're so shy. I didn't even have to use my telepathy for me to know that you desperately want to have a conversation, but you'd rather sink through the floor right now."  
  
Jim's eyes widened. "I didn't know it was that obvious," he said lamely. I couldn't help it, I laughed. Spirit laughed, too. He realized that we were laughing with, not at, him, and joined in. "I'm sorry," Jim eventually apologized. His voice was much firmer than it had been before, with less mumbling and uming. "I can't talk to girls."  
  
"You are now," I retorted. A huge grin crossed Spirit's face. ~What are you so happy about?~ I asked her.  
  
She linked her fuzzy, unbroken arm with mine. ~Isn't it great? We moaned about our appearance, fought, then made up. We laughed together. We're hanging out with a new student. Like any other girls our age. Any other girls. I wish the "Mutant's Are Dangerous" activists could see us now.~  
  
Our three-person conversation continued, but I made it telepathic so that I didn't have to repeat everything Spirit said, just pass the dialogue directly from mind to mind. By the time it ended, we were friends with Jim, who turned out to be quite a nice guy.  
  
I didn't think about Spirit's statement again for a long time. When I did, though, I realized its deep significance. Most mutants, like me, enjoyed at least twelve years of relative normality. Even later on, we could still walk down the street without arousing suspicion. But Spirit wasn't allowed to BE normal, like the few mutants that looked the part. Normality is a blessing that teens have always seemed to feel left out of, and mutants at the period of time were denied. The school was the only place she had ever felt normal, along with several other students.  
  
Unfortunately, the events that followed soon after that day forced her to be different and set apart again. For the weeks of peace was only yet another deep breath before a plunge. 


	7. Premonitions

Naturally the respite would not last. One day-I think it was a Tuesday- the teachers all had to rush out and save the world again. Very annoying when that happened, since that meant most classes were canceled until they either returned successfully or when we were all dead. I didn't know what the plot was this time, the students were generally not told, but I could easily find out later. In any case we had complete confidence that our teachers would handle everything.  
  
I said that most classes were canceled. We still had what was known among the students as Powers class, which was held downstairs in the Danger Room. Since Professor Xavier taught that class it could continue. Each class had students with similar powers. We were in the comparatively small group of "psi" mutants, or kids with psychic powers. Spirit's abilities didn't fit that category exactly, but it was the closest classification possible. Besides, the teachers had figured out by this point that the best way to deal with the two of us was to keep us together. She seemed most confident when I was around, and I behaved better when she was there. Today, though, things seemed different.  
  
Spirit wasn't acting like herself at all. She wouldn't let me enter her mind to talk to her, and was spending most of her time, while we were waiting for our turn in the Danger Room, hunched over, writing another song. I gave up and opened a new ghost story, and then tossed it aside in disgust when I saw how many clichés the author was using.  
  
~Really,~ I said to Spirit, trying to get her to open up to me again, ~how many ghost stories are about revenge? You'd think an author could think up a different motive.~  
  
No mental words, just a mental image of a safe closing, with a sign saying, "Do NOT open!"  
  
~SS, what's WRONG with you today?~ I asked, exasperated. Suddenly her iron reserve broke down, and she fell backwards onto her bed with a silent sigh.  
  
Her thoughts came out in a rush. ~Sorry, so sorry. I didn't mean to rebuff you, but I feel really weird today, nothing seems right, it's all so mixed up." She bolted up again. ~The teachers need to be HERE! This is where the danger is, but no, no, there's nothing they can do about this, oh dear oh dear.~ I felt her confusion and distress, but had no idea why.  
  
~Do you have PMS?~ I asked her after a while.  
  
~NO! Its, its...I don't know. But something's going to happen. Something bad.~  
  
~Well, that's nothing new. Something bad happens to us every few days. The teachers can handle it.~ I was worried about how panicked she seemed.  
  
She shook her head violently. ~No, they can't. I don't know what it will be, but they won't be able to cope. It's not a physical threat. I can feel it. Evil, evil, hatred, revenge...~ Spirit then moved over to sit across from me. ~You say revenge is a bad motive? Yes, but a very old and strong one. Strong enough to destroy...~ She shook herself like a wet cat. ~I feel really weird today.~  
  
~Yeah, I can tell,~ I commented dryly. ~Sounds like me after I've had visions.~  
  
Silent Spirit cocked her head. ~You have visions? You never told me that.~  
  
I smiled because I'd managed to pull her out of her morbid mood. ~Plenty. Only when I physically see something that is related to it, though. Like if I see a painting of a real battle, I'll SEE the battle happening, as truly as you would see me. Future is rarer, but sometimes it happens. I prefer finding things, though, it's less frightening.~  
  
~So do you ever feel like something's going to happen?~  
  
~All the time.~ I glanced at my watch. ~And it's time for Powers.~  
  
The class passed without incident. Professor Xavier had me try to extend the distances at which I could mind-talk, which left me exhausted. Non- mutants can't possibly understand what a drain trying to control your abilities is. Spirit was working on trying to talk to specific people, and listening to only one person at a time. At the end of the class we compared notes. My friend was still anxious, but being with the Professor had calmed her down. He had that effect on people.  
  
~I was able to block out a whole bunch of people!~ she announced. ~When I really concentrated, like he told me to, I did it! It's so nice to not hear constant disembodied whispering from dozens of people at a time.~  
  
~Congrats. I can now do telepathy with one wall between the other person and me! By the way, did you tell him about your premonitions?~  
  
Sprit nodded solemnly. ~He says he'll tell the teachers when they return.~ Despite assuring me that she was okay, she asked me to leave her mind alone for the rest of the day. I did so, and she returned to her hunched position on her bed, broken arm carefully cradled, for the rest of the day. Her sunglasses seemed like a symbolic barrier between her and me. I eventually left the room to go ask Jim to help me with my science homework, and stayed to talk with him even though his roommate, Arty, the kid with the black forked tongue, got on my nerves. Arty kept making immature kissing noises while Jim was explaining cell division to me. He finally shut up after I threatened to tie the two sides of his tongue together and stick him in a refrigerator. Arty's still very proud of his physical mutation, even though the only actual power he has is that he has the metabolism of a reptile, only having to eat once a week, drink once every two days, and is cold- blooded.  
  
That evening Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler crawled back. All except for Wolverine needed to go down to the infirmary, which was now run by a mutant doctor we knew as X-Ray. Wolverine had of course healed. I saw him sitting in the kitchen and asked him how the mission went.  
  
"Did you win?" I inquired.  
  
He quit chugging his soda and looked at me. "Has the world as we know it ended?" he asked back.  
  
"No."  
  
"Then we won."  
  
"What happened to the other teachers?"  
  
"They're bruised, beaten and burned. That da-I mean darn," Storm was trying to get him to watch his language and set a good example for us, "fireboy nearly burned down the jet."  
  
I grimaced. "Thanks," I said quietly. I felt pretty guilty, sitting back while they saved our futures. And I thought that I'd never be able to save them like that. My powers were of no use for combat.  
  
Wolverine muttered, "Sometimes I wonder if I should really keep doing this." He got up and stumbled towards the hall. "Going to get some sleep. You better go too, Spy. Classes tomorrow."  
  
"Goodnight," I said. ~Thank you so much,~ I added mentally. He turned, then continued on his way.  
  
Spirit was still in the same spot back in our room, only now I could dimly see that she was in pajamas, with her sunglasses and the lights off. Her silver hair glistened enough for me to notice that her pajamas had little bird designs. ~Have you moved at all?~ I asked.  
  
Without looking up from her book, one of my science fictions, she answered, ~You know that I'd have to move to change clothes.~  
  
~Have you eaten anything?~  
  
~No. Felt sick.~  
  
I shook my head. ~Teachers might think you're becoming anorexic, you know.~  
  
~Not if I throw up before I've eaten anything. I'll eat tomorrow, if I feel better.~  
  
~Do you want to go to the infirmary?~  
  
~I'll be fine. I snuck in and took some medicine. Besides, X-Ray will be busy with the teachers.~ In explanation she added, ~Jim stopped by and wrote me a note. About fifteen minutes ago. He said you were worried about me.~  
  
~I was.~  
  
~You can turn on the light if you like. This book's really good, by the way.~  
  
~Glad you like it. Don't worry, your hair is enough light already.~ I changed and brushed my teeth. When I came out Spirit was still reading. I left her alone and fell asleep.  
  
Someone was shaking me. Stop it, I thought. I was dreaming that my parents were on the news, saying what a horrible daughter I was. My little sister appeared next to me, shaking me. "Why did you mutate?" she asked me over and over. I tried to tell her that I didn't want to, but she was shaking me too hard. Then I heard a note of music, sharp and squealing, waking me up with a jerk.  
  
It was Silent Spirit, holding her clarinet in one hand. Her fur was soaked in sweat, her eyes wild. She tossed her instrument back onto her bed. I immediately opened up my telepathy. ~Sorry,~ she said, ~it was the only sound I could make.~  
  
~Bad dream?~  
  
~Oh, if only! No. Please come with me. Where's Professor Xavier's room?~  
  
That thoroughly woke me up. ~What? Why?~  
  
~It's happened. I hope I wasn't too late. Oh crap, what if I was?~  
  
~WHAT HAPPENED?~ I was out of bed by this time, putting on a pair of slippers.  
  
Tears began to squeeze out of her eyes. ~He's attacking them. HIM. Just because he's dead won't stop him! We need to go, explain what's happening. We need to wake the Professor.~  
  
I had a sinking feeling that I knew whom she was talking about. Even so, I asked, ~Who do you mean?~  
  
~William Stryker.~ 


	8. The Nightmares Begin

Author's note: To give credit where credit is due, much of this chapter was inspired by a particular elements of the short novel "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", written by an absolutely amazing author, Robert A. Heinlein. The story was introduced to me by an absolutely amazing person, my dad.  
  
The usual disclaimers continue to apply. I own nothing that you can recognize from any other source.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
I didn't ask Spirit anything further. My main focus was to run with my friend to Professor Xavier's room. Spirit warned me if I was about to crash into something, since all the lights were off. When we reached the correct room I carefully knocked on the door. No answer, so I took a deep breath and concentrated on the other side. He wasn't there.  
  
~He's gone,~ I told Spirit. She was sobbing uncontrollably. ~Calm down! It'll be okay!~  
  
~You don't know that. And if it's not okay, it'll be all my fault!~  
  
~Look, if you promise to try to stop being hysterical, I'll find him.~  
  
Silent Spirit wiped her nose with her sleeve and made an effort to stop crying. ~Could you try to find the teachers as well?~  
  
After a moment of effort I replied, ~They're all together, in the conference room.~  
  
~Where is it?~  
  
In answer I grabbed her good arm and hurtled towards the room the teachers were gathered in. The door was unlocked, and I could see lights shining out from under the door.  
  
~Do you have your sunglasses, Spirit?~ I asked.  
  
~Yes, let me get them on.~  
  
I called out, "Can you turn off the light until Silent Spirit puts her glasses on properly?" The light went off, and I felt the distinctive telepathic voice of the Professor enter our minds.  
  
~Why are you here, girls?~  
  
I answered aloud, "Spirit knows what happened and she wants to explain it to you. I don't know what it is myself, but she's really panicking about you. Are you okay in there?"  
  
The voice of Storm said, "We're in one piece. You can come in." My favorite teacher sounded ragged and worried. The room was generally off limits to students, which was why I asked for permission.  
  
Of course it was dark, because the lights were off. There was an eerie tension around the table, and I could vaguely see the outlines of all the staff. Spirit sank into a chair. A few scattered tears were still sliding down her face. Professor Xavier wheeled over to the wall and turned on the light.  
  
"Oh my goodness..." I said weakly at the sight that the illumination revealed. Every single teacher was badly injured in some way. And it wasn't from the day before, because those injuries had been bandaged or disinfected. These were new. Each X-Man had different wounds. Wolverine was nearly covered in dried blood. Nightcrawler's blue skin had scorch marks and burns, along with white rope marks on his wrists. Storm had angry purple and yellow bruises all over, several cuts, and a black eye. Cyclops was pale, wet, and had blue marks on his neck. Seeing the Professor was what made me cry, though. Most of head and half of his face was covered in bandages, and his eyes had a haunted look. I wondered if his face had been smashed in or something. Every student in that school loved him like a father, and to see him hurt broke me down. Spirit started off in tears again, though she couldn't make a sound.  
  
"Oh, don't cry, Spirit," implored Kurt. "You make it vorse zhan it is."  
  
"It's no worse that we usually get," said Wolverine.  
  
Cyclops made a strange gasping sound before he spoke. "We'll get better."  
  
"It's okay," reassured Storm.  
  
~It isn't you're fault,~ the Professor told her after I let her know what the others had said.  
  
A flood of fear and guilt, pain and compassion spilled out in Spirit's mind. Both the Professor and I picked it up. ~But it is my fault! I could see it all happening, but I couldn't stop it at first because HE took my glasses. Then I tried to, but then I couldn't save you. I only managed to wake you up before the worst happened.~ She was crying even harder.  
  
~Spirit, go get a box of tissues, then come back,~ Professor Xavier told her. She left weeping.  
  
"What the heck was it?" asked Wolverine. "Those dreams..."  
  
"I don't know either," I said, choking on the lump in my throat. "I don't know anything about this at all."  
  
Very calmly as always, the Professor answered, "I learned from Silent Spirit that she already knows about the dreams that we all had. Hopefully by the time that she returns she will be calm enough to explain the reason that this happened. However, not all of us know what has happened to the others, so it might be a good idea to tell what happened in your dream."  
  
Storm shuddered. "Those were no dreams. They were not even nightmares. They HAPPENED." I was thoroughly confused by this point. She continued in a toneless voice. "I dreamed I was walking down an ordinary street, on a field trip with the children. We were crossing the road. Then the sky turned dark, and a man's voice on the street shouted, 'Mutants! Mutants! Get them!' And everyone echoed him and turned on us. None of our powers worked, and I was trying to defend the students with only my physical fighting skills. But there were too many. Some began stoning us. It seemed like it was raining stones." Taking a deep breath, she continued, "Just when I was about to be knocked unconscious, I heard a voice crying out from very far away. Then it came closer and was louder. It was a girl's voice, one I had never heard before. She screamed 'Stop! Stop! The rocks began to slow, and eventually they ended. And I woke then, but all the wounds I had in the nightmare are still here."  
  
My eyes went huge. This was not real life, I thought. I've stumbled into one of my horror stories, but the characters are people I love and respect. They weren't just teachers, they were like parents to replace the ones who died or rejected us.  
  
Cyclops spoke next. "Mine wasn't as dramatic, but it wasn't pleasant either. In my dream I went back to...back to Alkali Lake." His voice trembled. "A huge wave came up and swept me in. The water was churning like a storm at sea, and I was having a difficult time keeping my head above water. It got worse and worse, until I literally was drowning. When I tried to swim back up I felt two hands on my neck. Pulling me down, down..." His voice trailed off. "I fought the person behind me, but the hands only tightened. Running out of air, I was about to give up. I couldn't think clearly any more. Then, like you, Storm, I heard a girl's voice calling me. 'Mr. Summers! Mr. Summers! SWIM UP!' The hands on my throat loosened, and I woke up. First I was relieved that it was a dream, but then I noticed that my clothes were drenched with water, and you can see the bruises." Mr. Summers shook his head in confusion. "It isn't possible," he murmured.  
  
Spirit came back with a box of tissues, blowing her nose. The tears had left black streaks on her gray fur. I filled her in on what they had said. She only nodded.  
  
After a long silence Nightcrawler spoke up. "Strange things happen every day. All of you can see I was burnt." He closed his eyes. "At zhe stake. Zhey said I vas evil. Like you, I first heard the voice of a man, zhe one who lit the fire. I did not see his face. I tried to pray as the fire grew around me, but zhere vas too much shouting for me to hear my own voice. Zhen I heard, as you did, a voice of a girl. She shrieked, 'Wait! I'm coming! Somebody put it out! I can't do it all at once...' Zhen zhe crowd parted, and zhe fire began to die down. And I avoke to find that I had truly been burnt."  
  
Wolverine said, "I see a pattern."  
  
"What happened to you?" I whispered only loud enough for him to hear.  
  
"Stabbed a few million times." Short and to the point as usual. "Ruined another mattress with the blood, I'm afraid. Sorry, Charlie."  
  
A massive yawn nearly split my head open. "Do you want to go back to bed?" Professor Xavier asked me.  
  
"No!" I said, "I want to know why all this happened. And what happened to you..." I began to cry. "Sorry. I won't do that again. But it's awful for both of us, seeing you hurt!"  
  
The Professor didn't tell me to stop. He let me cry for about five minutes, only handing me the tissue box. I think he was searching the now calm Spirit's mind. Eventually he said, "Spirit would rather that you stayed, Spy. It's upsetting, what has happened tonight. But I believe that I could have been much worse. Thanks to Silent Spirit, no permanent damage has occurred."  
  
"What did she do?" I asked, though I was already proud of my friend, who was now perking up a little. He told her first, of course.  
  
"Spirit has told me," the Professor sounded as if he was giving a very ordinary lesson on an ordinary day, without a smashed face, "that she also had a very upsetting dream tonight. Yesterday she felt restless and anxious, though she didn't know why. She wanted me to tell you that something might happen. She believes that what has happened tonight is supernatural." He paused to let that sink in, then continued, "Spirit says that she dreamed that she was in a bare, white room, with bright, white lights. The room had no doors or windows, but it had what appeared to be five television screens, all blank." Professor Xavier's narrative continued, but I didn't hear the rest of it.  
  
~Could you show me your dream?~ I telepathically asked Spirit.  
  
She was surprised. ~Why? Why do you want to be in a nightmare?~  
  
~I want to know what it was like for you.~ The answer surprised me too, but I felt as if that if I went through what she had gone through, it would help lift some of the burden off her.  
  
~Okay.~ She understood my meaning. I scooted my chair closer to hers, and I put each hand a short distance away from each side of her head. The Professor had taught me how to read memories a few weeks ago.  
  
The room was even whiter that words can convey, but it wasn't white in the way that feels like purity and virtue. It was the white of bleakness, the white of interrogation rooms. The screens that Professor Xavier had spoken of were all on one wall. They were the size of doors. All the other walls were completely blank. A voice came from behind.  
  
"What do you think of this place?"  
  
Spirit had turned, answering; "I don't like it very much. Can you show me the way out?" There was a pause. "How can I hear you?" she had wondered aloud. The man she now faced was about average height, solidly built. He had army clothing on, and looked the part, even though he seemed like he was on the wrong side of middle age. His face was the stoniest face that I ever saw.  
  
"Ah yes, Silent Spirit," he said, "the latest monster. Why, you're nearly as much a monstrosity as that Nightcrawler. He was very useful in some ways. You, however, are in my way." He smiled. "Am I scaring you? Me knowing who you are, but you having not the slightest idea who I am?"  
  
She had started to become frightened, but maintained a steady tone. "You must be dead, or else I couldn't hear you. You say you used Nightcrawler, and you obviously hate mutants. Therefore you are the ghost of William Stryker."  
  
"What is Xavier teaching you? Entirely too perceptive for my taste." He began to pace around the room with the air of an invincible man. If he really was dead, then he most likely was one. "And you are the only one who noticed that I was up to something."  
  
Her voice beginning to shake, Spirit had repeated, "Can you show me the way out?"  
  
"Not to a freak of nature." A very quiet statement, just enough to be either infuriating or terrifying.  
  
"Then why bring me here? What are you planning, you attempted mass murderer?" I privately cheered for her.  
  
"To tell you to not bother trying to stop me. I can do it to you too, you know. It took me three months of death to learn how to do to mutants what my so-called son did to my wife." His anger and hatred was seeping through.  
  
"You mean drive them insane?"  
  
"Much more that that. You see," The (ugh) ghost broke off and walked up to her. "Have a seat," he ordered.  
  
"But there's no..." she stopped when she saw that a (white) chair had materialized behind her. She sat down.  
  
He continued, "I'm sure that you know by now that a man can become a ghost if he is absolutely determined to not die."  
  
"Prefers revenge over peace, you mean."  
  
"Mince words if you like. A ghost is in the 'world' of the dead, yet aware of what is happening in the 'world' of the living. You, however, because of your particular disease..."  
  
"IT ISN'T A DISEASE!"  
  
"Stay in the chair. You're not ever going to go back by screaming at me, you know."  
  
Spirit stayed in the chair, fuming.  
  
"As I was saying, you are the opposite. You are in the 'world' of the living, but are aware of the 'world' of the dead. So we are essentially on the same plane of existence. Half in, half out. Which is what makes it possible for me to speak to you face-to-face like this."  
  
"I hate you," she muttered. He didn't hear her.  
  
"An interesting thing that I learned after I died was that dreams are also half in, half out. Between the waking and sleeping, between illusion and reality, and also between life and death. So it is possible, when you are in the ghost limbo, so to speak, to...manipulate...the dreams of others. Do things to them in the dream world. Frighten them, hurt them. Maybe even kill them."  
  
My friend had gasped. "You aren't going to do that."  
  
"I can and I will. Starting with those oh-so-wonderful teachers of yours, of course. Tonight will just be a practice. The dreams will get steadily worse. When I've either managed to kill them in their sleep, or get them to do it for me, I'll move on to your classmates. Then to the rest of all mutantkind."  
  
"No!"  
  
"I have all the time in the universe."  
  
"And what was the point of telling me all this?"  
  
Stryker was now in front of her, hands pinning her unbroken arm to the chair, leaning forward. His voice had shrunk to a whisper. "Your defenses are stronger than the rest. I can still break them down, though. If you don't try to interfere, I'll deal with you last. Which means that you could sleep soundly for several more years. If you decide to make a futile attempt to stop me, the nightmares will begin for you too. Understand?"  
  
"Then let them begin," she snapped.  
  
"It's your funeral," he said. "Oh, and I think I'll take these." Stryker's ghost pulled off her sunglasses, then disappeared with them.  
  
"Augh!" She tried to find a light switch with closed eyes. There was no switch. "Oh no!" Opening them for a brief moment, she had seen the screens, which were now showing the dreams of each teacher. They all were just as they had described them, except for the Professor's, which he hadn't said anything about. I only saw what she saw then, which was something involving blunt objects. It was horrible. I could feel that I was distressing Spirit again, so I exited the memory.  
  
~What happened next?~ I asked her.  
  
~I went through what I thought had been the screens. They were doorways. The voice the teachers heard was mine.~  
  
~You are amazing!~  
  
~Anyone would have done it.~  
  
~I probably wouldn't have had the guts to. You are absolutely amazing. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you yesterday. I promise I'll be there next time. If there is a next time.~  
  
~I'm afraid that there might be many next times, Spy.~ 


	9. Confidences and Comfort

I do not own the lyrics of "Love is in the Air", though I don't have the slightest idea who does. For the third time, I don't own X-men characters either. They own themselves, and nobody may say Spirit, Spy, or Jim belongs to them, cause they don't.  
  
*********************************************  
  
"What's going on, Spy?"  
  
I tried to look innocent. "What are you talking about?" We were sitting on a bench on the lawn outside, in a brisk Autumn afternoon. Other students were running around, the fortunate ones playing basketball and jumping into leaf piles, the unfortunate ones had been assigned to rake up leaves. A few of the older students had promised to make sure nobody injured anybody else.  
  
Jim groaned in irritation. "Come off it. When the teachers came back from their mission, they said that classes would resume the next day. For the past four days there have been NO classes, none of us have seen ANY if the teachers, and I think I've glimpsed Silent Spirit one and a half times during this time period."  
  
"One and a half?"  
  
"The second time I wasn't sure if it was really her."  
  
"And why do you assume that I know the reasons for this?"  
  
"You're psychic, and she also happens to be your roommate and your best friend. You wouldn't hang out with me this much if she was available."  
  
"That's not true," I spluttered, "you're my best GUY friend."  
  
His ears assumed a crimson tint, and his voice sank to an apologetic grovel. "Wow. Gee, thanks."  
  
"How many times have I told you to stop turning red at compliments?" I hoped that I could change the subject. The matter of Stryker's revenge was not announced to the school, since the staff didn't want to cause panic among the students. Spirit had assured the Professor none of the students, except most likely herself, would be in danger until Stryker's ghost finished with the adult X-Men. It was difficult for me to keep it in, though, because I was immensely worried about my friend and my teachers, and was ready to burst with anxiety and fear.  
  
Unfortunately, Jim was rather determined. His shyness had worn off quite a bit after he had found his niche at the school, even though he still wasn't completely confident in himself. "That's not the point," he said, "Spy, I want answers."  
  
Exasperated, I protested, "I'm not a blabbermouth. It's a secret."  
  
"Did you specifically promise to not tell anyone?"  
  
He had me there. "Jeremy James Withers," I said, "you would make a heck of a lawyer someday. No, I did not promise to not tell anyone. But I did agree to not let the entire school know."  
  
An eager look crossed his face. "So are you going to tell me?"  
  
"How do I know that you're not going to tell all your friends, who'll tell all their friends..."  
  
"I don't have any good friends besides you and Spirit. I mean, Arty's okay, but I don't discuss anything important with him. He's too annoying."  
  
I blinked a few times. "Oh."  
  
"Case in point," commented Jim, as Arty ran up to where we were sitting.  
  
Arty sighed melodramatically. "Don't you two look great together? When's the wedding?"  
  
"Arty," said Jim with his teeth clenched, "do you know that Iceman owes me a favor?"  
  
The cold-blooded midget (the name I privately called Arty) ignored Jim, singing, "Love is in the air..."  
  
Jim continued, "And I could ask him to encase you in a block of ice that would take a week to melt."  
  
"Everywhere you look around..."  
  
"Drop dead, Arty," I growled.  
  
"Love is in the air..."  
  
"I'll have Iceman leave a hole for you to breathe through, if I'm in a forgiving mood," added Jim.  
  
"In every sight and every sound..."  
  
I gave up. "Let's go to somewhere that's more pest-free, Jim," I suggested. We moved off towards the patio in the back of the mansion, next to the covered swimming pool that was now too cold to use.  
  
"LOVE IS IN THE AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" warbled Arty.  
  
"SHUT UP!" I screamed back.  
  
"ICE ARTY! THINK ABOUT ICE!" yelled Jim.  
  
"The immature reptile," I said to Jim once we were out of Arty's earshot, "one of those people who think that if boy and a girl enjoy talking to each other than they MUST be in love. I hate people like that. Does Iceman really owe you a favor?"  
  
He smiled. "Yes, I fixed his Game Boy. And his digital watch. And his alarm clock. I told him to try not letting them get damaged by frost." I grinned at the thought of the new Ice Age, taking place in the dorm of Bobby Drake. Jim added, "See? I tell the truth."  
  
"So you still want me to tell you what's going on."  
  
"Uh huh. Don't you trust me?"  
  
"For some strange unearthly reason, I do. If you call me a liar, though, I'll never speak to you again. I swear that this is the truth."  
  
"On my honor, I will not make fun of or doubt your explanation."  
  
"I better do it telepathically though, in case anyone might be eavesdropping." I recreated the events of four days ago in his mind. Once I finished, I asked, "Do you think I've gone nuts?"  
  
With great emphasis, Jim solemnly shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I would think that you were reading too many horror novels. But you wouldn't make up something like that, and it's no more unbelievable than the fact that I can make machines do whatever I want by just concentrating in the right way. It also fits as a reason for why the teachers aren't showing themselves. But why has Wolverine disappeared too? I mean, he heals every time, right?"  
  
"Yes, but he still feels just as much pain as anyone else, maybe more, because all his healing and the pain that comes with it is condensed into a few seconds. So he tries to not have the dreams. Which means trying not to fall asleep, which means consuming industrial quantities of coffee and becoming very irritable. Then when the teachers finally do fall asleep because they can't help it anymore, they wake up with the screaming horrors and have to go to the infirmary again to patch up the new injuries!" I was beginning to hyperventilate, and my vision started to blur. All my worries had been building up for those four days, and I just couldn't hold them back any longer.  
  
"Hey, calm down, relax, it's okay," Jim tried to reassure me.  
  
"And when they do f-f-fall asleep, Spirit has to go help rescue them, so she has to be on the alert all the time! And she herself is afraid to close her eyes, because she knows that HE is out to get her too, since she's trying to fight him. Though she's learned how to save the teacher's from their nightmares, she doesn't know how to save herself. So she has me wake her up every two hours, because you have to sleep for more than two hours before you start having dreams. But Spirit's so worried about all this that she can hardly ever FALL asleep, and besides when your sleep is interrupted it doesn't do you much good. When she's awake she spends all her time talking to the dead, to see if they know what to do. Or she ransacks my horror stories to see if any contain some clue about how to defeat a ghost. She'll lock herself in the bathroom and refuse to come out. I can't talk to her at all, her mind is so full of this obsession to save everyone. Except some nights I'll here her playing her clarinet, very softly, and it breaks my heart how sad it is. SAD!"  
  
"Spy," Jim said, "you're turning blue. Stop talking, let all the tears out, and just breathe. Try to get your breathing back to normal. Then you can tell me the rest."  
  
Feebly I said, "What I hate the most is that I can't help her." Then a fresh group of sobs took me.  
  
"I know, I know. Here, have a tissue." He withdrew a packet of Kleenexes from his pocket.  
  
I took a few and blew my nose. Quietly, I said, "How do you happen to be carrying around a bunch of tissues?"  
  
"My dad's a diplomat, and we spent some years in Asia. A lot public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. You get into the habit of it after a while." I continued sniffling and blowing my nose, along with wiping away the tears. I tried to smile in thanks, though. Jim continued, "I also have two sisters. My younger one's a bit of a crybaby, and my older sister seems to break up with a lot of boyfriends. They cry on my shoulder a lot."  
  
It was unusual for most mutant kids at that time to be able to talk about their families without bitterness. "Does your family still love you?" I asked, still sniffling.  
  
"Well, my powers manifested by making all the mechanical devices in the house go haywire. It freaked my parents out quite a bit. I'm not sure how they feel about it. Though they never told me to never come back, only my older sister e-mails me. I think they can't decide whether to disown me or not."  
  
"(Sniff) Lucky. My parents and little sister MOVED and didn't tell me their new address, though I soon found it out. (Sniff)" There was a minute of silence, then I said, "Poor Spirit. She didn't have a family from age 5 until age 13."  
  
"Yeah," agreed Jim. "Hey, how about you move over to me a bit..."  
  
"Why?" I blew my nose again.  
  
"You're probably really tense, having to keep all that information in for the past few days. I would've never known that something was wrong. Usually stress accumulates, I think, about here." He put a hand on each shoulder and began kneading the muscles between my neck and shoulders. Now, in sixth and seventh grade I had been repulsed by the idea a boy touching me, even at school dances. I was that sort of girl. But I really didn't mind Jim doing this. In fact, it did relieve a great deal of my tension. "That okay with you?" he asked quietly.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Now, what was the rest of what you wanted to tell me?"  
  
I sighed heavily. "Spirit won't talk to me. When I try to help her, or encourage her, she shuts me out. If I bring her some food, since she won't leave the room, she smiles politely, but later only a few bites have been taken. She'll write a little note saying, "Thanks, but I'm not really hungry." Spirit has been "not very hungry" for four days. I wish I could think of some way to help her in her struggle. I wish I could show her how concerned I was for her. I promised her that I'd be there for her," my voice shrank to a whisper, " but I feel like she's pushing me away."  
  
"How does she shut her mind to you?"  
  
"Apparently it's the same process that she uses to shut out the voices that she doesn't want to hear."  
  
Jim stopped the massaging, saying, "She knows that you want to help her. It's just that, well, some things have to be gone through alone."  
  
I shook my head. "She's gone through way too much alone."  
  
"Well, I'm not the best at this type of thing. Give me a computer with a virus, or something."  
  
"You're doing really well! I feel miles better."  
  
"I know who is good at advice, though," Jim said, acting as if he hadn't heard the compliment, "the Professor."  
  
"But I don't want to bother him! He has enough on his mind already."  
  
"Silent Spirit is not going to be able to handle this alone, Spy. Would Professor Xavier send the teachers out on a mission without helping them figure out their strategy? How is this different? Maybe he knows some way that you can get through to her and help. The sooner Spirit thinks up a solution, the sooner he'll be okay."  
  
That was how I ended up knocking on Professor Xavier's office door the next day. Though he was always tired, he had decided that he better have something to occupy him, and there was plenty of paperwork for him to do. I was on the verge of turning back when I felt his familiar thoughts in my head again.  
  
~Yes, Spy? What is it?~  
  
~I'm worried about Spirit. I thought that maybe you could...~  
  
~Certainly I could talk to you. There's nothing pressing for me to accomplish just now. Come in.~  
  
I opened the door, remembering the first time I had come in to this office. Then I had been dreadfully scared, with my nervously hostile parents at my side. But when I saw him, heard his voice, felt his thoughts in my mind, I felt that everything would be okay. Even when I saw the bandages that covered three-quarters of his head, I still felt better than before I had walked in the door, and his smashed face didn't shock me anymore, since I had seen it before. I was relieved to see that there were no new injuries.  
  
"Take a seat," Professor Xavier said. He wheeled over to his desk, having previously been facing the other way, looking out of the large windows.  
  
"I'm sorry to trouble you..." I began.  
  
"Not at all. I have actually missed all of you these past few days." His warm, cultured words put me at ease.  
  
"Spirit won't let me into her mind. She locks herself in the bathroom or sits in a corner all day. I-I-I'm very anxious about her."  
  
"And Jeremy suggested that you talk to me about her."  
  
"What?!"  
  
The Professor smiled kindly. "I won't tell anyone, don't worry. But the view from my office does encompass the patio."  
  
"I'm really sorry, but I was cracking under the strain. I had to tell someone," I apologized.  
  
"As he pointed out to you, you never promised to not tell a single person about this matter. It seemed to help you a great deal."  
  
"It did," I confirmed, relieved once more. "Do you know of any way that I could help Spirit?"  
  
"I'm afraid that you will have to let her sort this out by herself, Spy. She feels that this is her responsibility, and it is true that she is the only one of us equipped to fight such an enemy."  
  
I looked down at the table, pretending to be fascinated by a scrap of paper on it. "So can't I do anything?"  
  
Professor Xavier thought for a moment. "The difficulty that Silent Spirit currently has," he said, "is that she has to learn to be able to depend on someone. Her life has required her to take care of herself. The people she has depended upon have always been taken away from her. Even though she now is able to communicate with her parents, they still can only give her whispered assurance and comfort. I think that she subconsciously believes that if she relies too much upon someone, they will disappear from her life."  
  
~The poor girl,~ I thought.  
  
~She is remarkable, isn't she?~ the Professor thought back. In words he asked me, "Did she ever tell you how her arm was broken?"  
  
"No. She'd always change the subject."  
  
"Once I asked her if it would be all right with her for me to tell anyone the story, and she told me that I could tell you if I thought you needed to know. I think that it might help you understand her a bit more, and perhaps lead you to some ideas. It was because of this event that she her powers became apparent.  
  
"You know that the abilities of mutants usually awaken during adolescents, in response to very strong emotion. For Spirit, it was fear. I learned from her that during her aimless travels through Washington, D.C, people whose hatred of mutants had been recently awoken often attacked her. She told you that she traveled at night. Unfortunately, the actual city of Washington, D.C, is not known for being a safe place for a young girl to travel alone after dark."  
  
"Ugh," I interjected.  
  
"This was in the inner city, not government-dominated area with the White House and memorials and such. I greatly regret that it took us so long to repair Cerebro, or else we could have saved Spirit a great deal of hardship. One night, exactly one week before Storm and Mr. Summers found her, she ran into a man in a back alley. Apparently he was drunk, with the remains of his smashed bottle with him. He broke her arm, among other things."  
  
I was shocked, though it wasn't any different than what you saw in the newspaper every day. But this was about someone I knew and cared for, which made all the difference.  
  
"Eventually it reached the point when Spirit was absolutely certain that she was going to be killed. When her fear had reached a peak point, beyond screaming and beyond any terror she had ever felt before, he suddenly slumped to the ground. He was dead."  
  
I managed to bring my jaw back up again with some effort.  
  
"She told me that she felt a mixture of relief, guilt, and more fear. For she considered herself a murderer, even though it was self-defense. Spirit wondered what kind of power this was, having known that she had the mutant gene all her life. Then she began to hear voices, whispering to her all around. It seems to be like having uncontrolled telepathy, feeling like you hear millions of people at a time, but you can only hear fragments of everyone. When she heard her mother for the first time and her father for the first time in years, it was an immense comfort among all this strangeness. Later she discovered that she could no longer hear the cars rush by, or the birds in the morning, or the rain, or any other of those sounds that she had taken for granted all her life. She moved from despair to exultation continually until we found her." He took a deep breath, and continued, "I am not sure how the initial feat of hers was accomplished. The only theory that I have developed is that, being so close to death continually, she can force others to make the transition immediately, if she wants enough them to die. It was completely by accident. All of Spirit's abilities depend greatly upon her emotions. Who she hears is dependent upon how she feels at the time."  
  
"Is that why she forces herself to stop being angry?"  
  
"Yes, for when she is furious she will hear the voice of the man she killed."  
  
"Oh," I said quietly.  
  
He looked at me with complete understanding. "Does that help any?"  
  
"I understand what she's going through more, if that's what you mean."  
  
Professor Xavier nodded, then handed me a folded bit of paper. "You're not the only one who's been worried about Spirit. Mr. Wagner gave me this earlier this morning. He said it was especially for her, but it was for you as well. Why don't you give it to her?"  
  
~Thank you!~ my thought came as I left his office, a hope rising in my heart that I had not felt for days. Why hope, when I had just heard a very depressing story? Somehow I knew that things would improve from that point on. It just HAD to. 


	10. Angels to Guard Thee

The stories of H.P. Lovecraft (which managed to keep me up half the night with the light on the first time I read them, and kept me in a state of terror for the next week or so) do not belong to me. Should you want a good scare about decaying villages in backwoods New England, or ancient evil gods being awoken to destroy the world as we know it, get your hands on a copy of his stories. I enjoyed reading them a great deal, but the aftermath of paranoia made me quit. He makes "Goosebumps" look like little children's picture books.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Silent Spirit was crouched on her bed, reading through "The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories" by H.P. Lovecraft, and writing notes on her favorite notepad.  
  
~How's it going?~ I asked her.  
  
~Not to good,~ she thought back, not looking up, ~the methods of putting evil to rest all involve reading aloud from some ancient book. When the evil is put to rest at all, since there seems to be an unhappy ending about half the time.~  
  
~Well,~ I told her, moving over to my bed, ~at least you're talking to me.~  
  
~There was a non-horror story in the book, about a man who had such pleasant dreams that he left the real world forever and stayed in the dreams, that made me feel better.~  
  
~Speaking of feeling better,~ I thought as encouragingly as I could, ~this note is for you. From Kurt.~  
  
Spirit reached over with her left hand and took it. I felt a spark of interest emanating from her. As she carefully unfolded and read the note, I closed my eyes and focused upon what it said.  
  
In Nightcrawler's distinctive and careful handwriting, the note stated:  
  
Silent Spirit, I have been much concerned about you. I am aware that it is your battle that you must fight, but remember to not be prideful, refusing the help of others. Your friends and teachers will do anything to end this problem. I do not know how religious a person you are, but from experience I have found that faith is one of the strongest weapons for survival in a difficult time. Besides the 23rd Psalm, my favorite psalm in the Bible is the 91st. I feel that it might help give you hope and strength, as it has for me. This is a part of the psalm, the part that I find to be the most powerful. It seems to speak of your situation especially.  
  
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.  
  
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.  
  
A thousand shall fall at they side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.  
  
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.  
  
Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation.  
  
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.  
  
For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.  
  
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.  
  
God be with you in your trials. I have faith in you.  
Kurt Wagner  
  
~Such a nice man,~ I thought to Spirit when I had finished.  
  
I felt a rising bubble of excitement and victory from her, which exploded in a wild mental shout, ~EUREKA!!!~ She jumped up on the bed and threw her sweater up in the air with one hand.  
  
~What? What?~ I asked, confused, but happy for her.  
  
~I've figured it out! It all fits together now! I'll need to work out the plan first, of course, but I've got the basic idea!~  
  
~What idea? You mean how to deal with the haunting?~  
  
~YES!~  
  
I jumped down off my bed, pulled her with me, and did a happy dance with her. ~I knew you'd get it! I knew it was going to get better!~  
  
She abruptly stopped and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. ~It's not guaranteed that it will work, but it's something. Let me sketch out the outline of it first, then I'll tell you.~ My friend grinned. ~And I've just realized that I'm hungry! I haven't been hungry for days.~  
  
~To the kitchen!~ I shouted telepathically, linking my left arm with her right. We skipped off together.  
  
Some minutes later, while she slurped a bowl of clam chowder, she asked me several detailed questions about my powers. I answered every time, too happy about her cheer to ask why she wanted to know. Today I only remember a few of the questions.  
  
~You said that you've learned how to access some of the deepest parts of the brain, right? The part that contains skills and abilities?~  
  
~Yes, but it's hard.~  
  
~How do you "visit" a place with your clairvoyance? Do you have to have been there, or can you go when you've just seen a picture, or are you able to take yourself somewhere if you've just heard a description of it?~  
  
~It's easiest if I've been there, or I can do it after seeing a picture, which is more difficult. I've never managed to do it with only a description.~  
  
Her enthusiasm waned for a moment, then flared up again. ~That's okay. Didn't you once say that when a telepath has done a great deal of telepathy with a person, they have a sort of "psychic link" that makes the telepath able to achieve things that they are unable to do with anyone else? ~  
  
~Yes, though I'm not sure when I said that.~  
  
~The first week I was here. Do you have a link like that with me?"  
  
~I don't know, it's pretty likely, I guess. I talk to you telepathically so often.~  
  
Spirit finally looked up from the now drained soup bowl, shaking her head. ~You haven't been able to recently. I'm sorry that I shut you out. It wasn't your fault.~ She ran her fingers through her silver hair, putting it into something faintly resembling order.  
  
I stroked her broken arm. ~It's okay. I know you've got a lot to deal with. But will you let me help you? You can't do it all alone, even if you're as special as I know you are.~  
  
My best friend smiled. ~Thanks. What did you think I was asking you all those questions for? The plan I'm working on has you in the picture.~  
  
~And you'll tell me what it is when you're finished with it?~  
  
~Yes.~  
  
I shifted uncertainly. ~I told Jim about the nightmares when I was really stressed out about you yesterday. He believes it, and promises to not tell anyone. Is that okay with you?~  
  
~Of course it is! Techie's our friend too. Though I think he likes you a shade better than he likes me. ~ SS grinned smugly.  
  
~I don't know what you're talking about...~  
  
~Yeah right. You sense emotions. You should know. ~  
  
~He's our friend, okay? Our FRIEND.~  
  
~Honestly, do you sometimes ever want him to be more than that? ~  
  
~Sometimes...~ I admitted.  
  
~Here he comes, ~ Spirit added.  
  
"This is great!" rejoiced Jim upon seeing Spirit. "I was afraid that you were going to disappear forever. Glad I'm wrong. Are you feeling better, Spy?"  
  
"Yeah, thanks," I answered as I told the smiling from ear-to-ear Silent Spirit what he had said.  
  
"She looks a lot more cheerful than you described her," Jim said as he pulled out a stool and sat next to me, putting down his school binder. Our order was he, me in the middle, and Spirit on my right.  
  
"Things are looking up," I replied, "she's working on a plan about how to deal with it."  
  
~Does Jim have a piece of paper and a pencil that I could use? Scrap paper's fine. ~ Spirit thought to me.  
  
I told him what she wanted, and he handed over a sheet with printing on one side and a pen. ~Why? ~ I asked her.  
  
~I want to draw something. ~  
  
~I didn't know you were good at drawing. ~  
  
~Fairly good, but I just haven't shown you any drawings yet. ~ She began to meditatively scribble with the pen.  
  
"What's she sketching?" Jim asked. I shrugged.  
  
Presently she did a final flourish with the pen, and pushed the paper over to where Jim and me could see it. Then she yawned massively, and got up to rinse out the bowl in the sink. When I looked at the illustration a chill went down my spine. There was a high plateau that appeared to be suspended in a black void. On the broad plateau there were massive gray boulders, their edges standing out like upturned spears. They formed a ring around the center of the plateau, where there was something that looked like a bleak, deathly white box the size of our bedroom. It had no doors or openings, and something about it felt like a prison cell. Underneath this drawing was a separate one labeled, "Inside the Cell", which looked just like the image I had seen in Spirit's mind, from her nightmare. There were the five doorways, like in her dream, but they were now colored solid black, and there was the bright white light on the ceiling. However, there was a separate door, closed, labeled, "Reality".  
  
"Man! That picture is creepy," murmured Jim, echoing my feelings.  
  
When Spirit came back to the table I asked her why she drew such an unsettling picture. ~Is that what was on the outside of the room in your dream? ~  
  
Silent Spirit nodded. ~During the past few days I've been talking to a lot of people. Among them was a former ghost, who had eventually been put to rest after three centuries of haunting a medieval cathedral. She told me that she'd found herself in a strange, desolate place that had a portal leading to the rafters of the cathedral, where she could see tourists come to visit, and generally observe what was going on. The place aside from reality, though, was this ghost desert. The former ghost gave me a detailed description of what it looked like. It stands to reason that the limbo where Stryker is spending most of his time looks like my drawing.~  
  
~But why did you need to draw it?~  
  
~Because I'm hoping that you are able to take us there.~  
  
"Spy, are you okay?" asked Jim. "What are you talking about? You've turned the color of a blank Word document." When I told him what Spirit had told me about the drawing, he turned the same color, along with dropping his jaw.  
  
~I was worried that you might react that way,~ thought my furred friend ruefully. ~I'd thought about going there as soon as I heard about it, but I didn't know how we could actually defeat him once we were there. That's the idea that Mr. Wagner's note gave me, after I'd spent the past two days trying to come up with an answer. You see, at the beginning of the year I had a one-on-one written conversation with him. He was wondering if my abilities fit in with his beliefs, and I told him that if you thought of it as hearing angels, instead of as hearing ghosts, than it seemed to fit quite nicely. I can't even hear Stryker's ghost, as he isn't on the right 'wavelength' for me to hear him, except in dreams. In any case, when I read the quotation about angels helping to guide the way, it all clicked. We can't fight him, because the living can't hurt him, but the dead could hurt him. ~  
  
I saw the light. ~There's probably several deceased mutants out there who are willing to help, right? ~  
  
~Oh yes, and there's also my parents, and many of my ancestors, various late pro-mutant activists, tons of people.~  
  
~But why do WE have to go there? Can't you just sic them on Stryker? ~  
  
~He's not on their plane of existence either. We have to show them the way to get to him. Trailblaze the path. Summon the avenging angels. You get the idea. We also have to work together, because you'd never be able communicate with anyone or summon the fighters without me. But I couldn't get there without your clairvoyance projecting us there. Fortunately, you have both clairvoyance and telepathy. Since we're best friends and you read my mind a lot, hopefully we have a link strong enough for you to get both of us there.~  
  
I related this plan to Jim. "Do you think it's possible?" I asked him.  
  
"I'm not going to decide this," he said. "It's your decision. But do you really have a choice?"  
  
How could we ever do it? I wondered. Jim was right, though. If I didn't go along with it, not only would I be proving myself to lack loyalty and courage, but Stryker's new plan of havoc would succeed. For only Spirit and I could stop him. Taking a deep breath, I told both of my friends, ~Okay. I'll do my best. ~ 


	11. The Journey

Additional Disclaimer: The song, "Angeles" (yes, that's how it's supposed to be spelled) that I included in this chapter doesn't belong to me. The song was composed and sung by Enya, and Roma Ryan wrote the lyrics.  
  
****************************************************************************  
  
We ended up not going on our supernatural mission until the next day. Spirit decided to tell Professor Xavier about her idea, and then wanted us to get a good night's sleep first. I nearly changed my mind about helping out when my friend explained to the Professor why he needed to know this.  
  
~I don't want anyone else to know about this, ~ Spirit thought, ~because I don't want to disappoint anyone unnecessarily. It is probable that we will fail.~  
  
~WHAT?!~ my mind burst out.  
  
"You agreed to take the necessary risks, correct, Amanda?" Professor Xavier's voice steadied me and kept me from quitting. People only called me by my real name when they were very serious. One look at his terribly hurt face made me gulp and agree.  
  
My friend continued, ~I'm sorry, Spy, but it's really possible. Even if we manage to get our spirits there, we might not be able to come back. I'm not sure how the return'll work. Which is why Professor Xavier needs to know about this. Please, Professor, if it's been more than a month (I don't know how time there interacts with time here) and we are still vegetables, let us die.~  
  
How she was so calm is still a mystery to me. I was breaking out in cold sweat.  
  
Eventually, though, we were given permission to go through with it, and went to bed. Spirit was so tired, and so afraid of the consequences of being unable to accomplish our aim, that she was willing to risk sleeping. I couldn't sleep at all. This made me able to wake her up when she began to have nightmares, though, so it wasn't altogether a bad thing.  
  
~Ew, you poor girl, your fur is singed,~ I thought to her.  
  
~Dreamed about my old home burning again,~ she thought back shortly, rubbing salve on the burns. ~Thanks for waking me up. You can't sleep?~  
  
~Too scared.~ I answered, hugging myself in the semi dark.  
  
~I can't get back to sleep either. I'm tired of this. I want to rest! Let's go now.~  
  
~NOW? At this time of night?~  
  
~Technically, it's morning. 2 AM. Besides, I can hear better at night. There is less brightness to cancel out my other senses. I'm not so flooded with light.~  
  
~How can you be so cheerful?~  
  
Her dark abysses of eyes widened. ~I'm just trying to put a brave front on it. Are you ready?~  
  
~I need the picture. And a flashlight.~ She produced both from under her bed, and donned her shades against the light. The picture still made me shiver. ~I really don't want to go there, ~ I thought nervously.  
  
~Want to hold hands? I'm just as terrified as you are.~ Her fur was bristling like the tail of a nervous cat. ~When you do this, make sure that you keep the telepathic link with me strong. Read my memory if you have to. Keep a fierce hold on me while at the same time project yourself to the place. Take a good look at it, then turn off the light.~  
  
I switched off the flashlight with my shaking free hand and took a deep breath. Simultaneously, my mind took in a long drink of my friend's quiet but powerful thoughts. The only sounds I could hear was our breathing and my own heartbeat. ~I'm scared,~ I repeated.  
  
~We're in this together, Spy. I promise that I won't let go until this is over. Feel the connection between us. You and I have an unbreakable bond. This will make me able to follow you into the darkness and back out again.~  
  
~Right. Best friends together. Now what?~ Doubts were creeping in my mind, drowning it in anxiety.  
  
~Calm down, Spy.~ Spirit wasn't relaxed herself, but I could feel her self- confidence and faith in me that strengthened my will. ~Take us to the place. Imagine it. It's cold and dark and is filled with a sense of waiting. There is no life, and there is no peace. I know that your entire being wants nothing more than to stay away, but remember that it is not all a void. I will be there too. What keeps me going is the thought that all your life and laughter and spirit will be with me there. Everything that you need to help you, find it in yourself, or in me.~  
  
I did all she told me, straining all my powers to the utmost. The effort began to give me a headache, and I felt chills travel down my spine. Even though I had worn old sweatpants to bed and had put on a sweatshirt over an oversized T-shirt, I felt very cold. It was almost completely dark, and I couldn't see a thing. ~I can't do it, Spirit,~ I thought in despair. ~I'm sorry. I really tried.~  
  
"Who says you couldn't do it?" said a quiet voice at my elbow. I nearly jumped out of my skin.  
  
"Who is it?" I asked, dazed and now on my feet. The only thing I saw in the darkness was a faint gleam of silver.  
  
"Me, of course." It was a thin, reedy voice, like the sound of wind whispering through the trees. In my morbid state it sounded to me like the voice of a girl ghost. "Get used to the light first, then you can see me. I can see you fine. I took my glasses off back in the room."  
  
My voice quavered uncertainly. "Silent Spirit? Why can I hear you? Does that mean we're...THERE?" I realized that my voice was also a dim echo of my actual one, and that I couldn't manage to sound louder than a whisper.  
  
"We certainly are. You're wonderful, Spy! Even though I gave you all the instructions I could, that was a really hard thing to do with minimal guidelines. Professor X should promote you to the X-team as soon as we get back. Oh, careful, you're standing on the edge. Don't fall off."  
  
Inching forward cautiously, groping my way forward in the darkness, I reminded her, "There's not much use for my powers in battle, I'm afraid."  
  
"But you could definitely find out what the Brotherhood was doing. Can you see anything now?"  
  
"My eyes are starting to adjust. Oh dear. It looks exactly like your picture." We indeed seemed to be on a plateau of bare, light gray rock, suspended in blackness. Darker boulders pierced the star-less, eternal night, with razor-sharp edges. I tried touching one. The stone went straight through me. "I'm a ghost!"  
  
"If ghosts are insubstantial in the living world, doesn't it make sense that living things would be insubstantial in theirs?" Spirit's eyes, which I had previously found cold and empty, were now a relief to me. They were restful pools of sleep and meditation, as opposed to the foreboding, sinister darkness around us. However, they seemed to be almost suspended in midair, surrounded by a gray fog that used to be her face, and framed by a silvery shine that no longer looked like hair.  
  
I asked, "Where is the light coming from?"  
  
"From the building. It's hidden behind the rock I have to my back. I can't look at it."  
  
"Was that where your dream..."  
  
"Yes," she cut me off.  
  
I moved to where there were no stones blocking my view. The distance to the brilliantly bleak white cell was much farther than her picture had led me to believe. It seemed to be at least a mile, and it was in the exact center. "Do we have to go there?" I asked her weakly.  
  
"Yes. He'll be in it." Though her voice was barely audible, it was very steady. "Lets go." Spirit pulled me away from the boulder with her left hand.  
  
"Hey, your cast is gone!" I exclaimed. "Our bodies look like shadows." Flickering dark outlines of where my torso and legs used to be met my eyes. We could see the rocky ground through our feet. "This is weird.  
  
"Life is full of weirdness," whispered Silent Spirit. I noticed that she was looking in every direction except the building. Side by side we walked, grasping each other's wraithlike hands. The warm pressure of her fingers was an immense comfort in all this emptiness.  
  
As we walked I asked my friend several questions. "Why can I hear you?" was my first.  
  
"By transporting your soul here, you've tuned your hearing to the same sound waves that I hear. So now we can hear each other, which is a good thing because you're keeping our psychic link together, which makes your telepathy too busy for you to read my mind." Her voice blew in and out, increasing and decreasing in volume in an inhuman way. She didn't need to pause for breath.  
  
"But why are we so quiet?"  
  
"Your voice belongs to the world of the living. Mine now belongs to the world of the dead. The ghost world is halfway between both. So we hear half of our voices."  
  
"Where'd your cast go?"  
  
"We didn't bring our bodies with us. What you see is our memories of our own bodies being there."  
  
"Then how can we see and feel? How come your eyes still see in the dark better than mine?"  
  
"Spy, I don't know everything." Her sad look silenced me. "Everything I know, I learned during the past few days. I don't want to think about them."  
  
"I'm sorry." I apologized. "I forgot that you're not a wizardess."  
  
She answered, "It's okay. It's just that – well - I'm getting tired of this power. Talking to my parents is great. But not hearing your voice, or the voice of anyone else at the mansion, is not so great. I miss hearing rain falling on the roof. I miss watching movies and listening to CDs. It seems like forever since I heard music on the radio, or popcorn popping, or crickets chirping, or birds singing in the morning. And I've never been able to go into a public place all my life. ALL MY LIFE!" On the last statement her voice grew to as loud and she could manage, which was an intense stage whisper. Then her voice dropped to as quiet as possible for her, and I had to strain to hear. "If I weren't a mutant, my mom wouldn't have died when I was born. Sometimes mutant births bring complications." My friend sighed.  
  
"Spirit, you can't help being what you are. Besides, there must have been some other reasons!"  
  
"She had pneumonia then, too, Dad said," admitted Spirit.  
  
"See? And if you didn't have these powers, we wouldn't have met."  
  
"True."  
  
"And we wouldn't be able to win against Stryker."  
  
She turned to me, though still walking onwards. "Do you think we will?"  
  
I assured her, "If you and I can't do it, no one can."  
  
Spirit smiled slightly. "I'm glad you're here with me." She paused. "You know, I've been thinking...this is probably the only time in this life that you'll ever hear my voice. So, um, could I sing something?"  
  
"Go ahead. It would help a lot."  
  
Silent Spirit thought for a moment, then whispered, "This was one of my dad's favorites. It's pretty old. He used to play it at night..." Her voice trailed off. Then she began to sing. Her full voice came in then, clear, strong, and lovely. It seemed loud after all the whispering. The sound itself seemed to alter the shape of the land we were in and make it more bearable, the land which had never heard music. I doubt that anyone could've come up with a more appropriate song for the occasion. Why did she sound like her true self when she sang? My belief is that music transcends all dimensions and times.  
  
[Angels, answer me, are you near if rain should fall?  
  
Am I to believe you will rise to calm the storm?  
  
For so great a treasure words will never do  
  
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...  
  
Here, all to soon the day!  
  
Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow.  
  
I should know heaven has her way - each one given memories to own  
  
Angels, all could be, should you move both earth and sea  
  
Angels, I could feel all those dark clouds disappearing...  
  
Even, as I breathe, comes an angel to their keep.  
  
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...]  
  
As soon as her song ended, I nudged for her to look up. "That can't be a falling star, can it?" I said. A white spark was shooting down towards us. It grew as it fell, until it began to resemble a human form. The form was also transparent, but unlike our dark shadows it was a white mist. When it reached the ground I could see that it was in the shape of a man. Somehow the presence made the terrible emptiness less empty and terrible, and my fears were soothed.  
  
"Dad?" whispered my friend. Then, a phantom tear running down her cheek, she said, louder this time, "Dad! Why...why are you already here? Our enemy is still hiding."  
  
The form said simply, in a voice that was just as quiet, but much more powerful than ours, "You called." He smiled. "I couldn't miss that song." Spirit reached out a hand to him, but he drew back, shaking his head. "Not yet, Myra. It is not the time. One day you can touch me again. But not tonight." We resumed our trek, having stopped walking when he appeared. Spirit was between him and me.  
  
"Is Mom coming?" she asked him, a little hurt about not being able to hug him.  
  
"Do you want her to be here now? I could have her follow. She's been organizing the people who want to help you. They will come at her signal. I'm sort of scouting it out first, as it were." He seemed to notice me for the first time. "Is this your friend Spy, Myra?"  
  
Spirit answered, "Yes. Sorry I forgot to introduce you. Spy, this is my father, Charles Sing. Dad, this is Spy. She got us here."  
  
Mr. Sing nodded at me. "I've heard a lot about you. Thank you for looking after my daughter."  
  
"It's-it's n-nothing." I stuttered. "She's a great friend."  
  
"Are you a little skittish about the fact that I'm dead? You sound nervous."  
  
I was extremely embarrassed. "Well, it's a pretty disturbing place anyway. But, yeah, I just find it a little weird..."  
  
"It's all right. I was a bit uncertain of myself after I died, but by now I'm used to that. Actually my shape is a bit brighter than this, but I had to tone it down so that Myra could still look at me."  
  
"Oh, good," whispered Spirit in relief. "I'd just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about that."  
  
"We'll be pretty blinding even so, though. Be ready for it when the rest come," warned her father.  
  
"I don't want the rest of the spirits here yet. Do they have to come at the same time that Mom does?" asked my friend.  
  
"I was able to find you because of the song. It connected us. Your mother will be able to find me, because we are so close, but the others need to be directly behind her, or else they might get lost. You have no idea how dark and far the way here is," he answered.  
  
"Where did you come from, anyway?" I inquired.  
  
Both the Sings stared at me. "Somewhere..." answered Mr. Sing. "Call it what you like. I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it."  
  
Spirit added, "He hasn't told me either, Spy. It's nothing personal. Nobody I've talked to may tell me what the afterlife is like. Nor what religion got it right. That would...mess things up. People aren't meant to know for sure about what happens after death. It has to depend on faith. But I know that SOMETHING does, obviously."  
  
Changing the subject, I asked Silent Spirit, "What exactly are we going to do once we reach the building?"  
  
"Our helpers are going to go inside the building..." she began.  
  
Mr. Sing shook his head. "We can't." He tried to explain why, but couldn't think of the word. "It's..."  
  
"Too evil?" suggested I.  
  
"That's one way of putting it," he whispered. "But there's more to it than that. The substances are incompatible. Ghosts are so close to Nothing. Angels are so close to Everything."  
  
He seemed to be struggling, so I whispered, "It's okay. Don't hurt yourself."  
  
"I guess you'll have to, Spy," Spirit told me regretfully. She looked shell- shocked by this change of events.  
  
"You're coming too, right?" I asked.  
  
Spirit shook her head. "I'm really sorry. I would, but it's too bright for me in there. And Stryker doesn't know you, but he knows me. He knows what I'm scared of, and he knows how to attack me. Though he knows you exist and that you're my best friend, he doesn't know your mind, because he hasn't been studying it. It never occurred to him that you might pose him a threat."  
  
I cringed. I've never pretended to be a girl of valor. "What?!" I protested. "You never said I'd have to do that. This was not part of the deal!"  
  
"I'm really sorry," Spirit repeated, looking down and letting go of my hand. "I was so certain that the spirits could go in, that I forgot to ask. I thought I'd said that I needed you to do that, though, Dad."  
  
"No," said her father, "you never did. You should have. This is when happens when you're not prepared. Remember what I said about that, Myra? What your mother said?"  
  
She began to look frustrated. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I've been under a lot of pressure lately, you know."  
  
"That you have," he replied soothingly.  
  
Forgiving her for her mistake, I said, "Okay. I think that it would have been more reasonable if you had told me earlier, but this is no time or place to argue. This has to be done, even though I must be one of the worst people to do it." I paused. "For our teachers and friends. For peace."  
  
Relief washed over Spirit's face. "For me. Thank you. This won't happen again."  
  
"I hope not," I commented acidly. "What do I have to do, anyway?"  
  
"Get him out of there," whispered my friend. "Theoretically, you could walk straight through the wall. Like that girl in the dorm across the hall from ours. Use any way you want. Insulting him would probably work best. But be careful, because he can control everything in that room. Make sure that he's outside of it before you get him too riled up."  
  
"Suddenly, it seems like it'll a loooong time before we go home," I muttered to myself as we, two phantoms and an angel of glory, continued to travel on a plain of futility, under a sky of death. 


	12. On My Own, Yet Not Alone

Author's Notes: I would like to apologize for the long delay since the first chapter. Most likely my readers are staying awake at night, wondering what happened to Spirit and Spy, or at the very least are quite eager read the climax. Part of the reason for this is that Spy has just had her first child a few months early, named Myra after her late friend. At first we were all afraid that little Myra wouldn't pull through her first few days of life, but now she is doing well. Her parents are now rather busy, but Spy has managed to scrape some time together to help me with this chapter. I myself have been preoccupied with various affairs, and we haven't been able to meet for a while. This chapter is the most important in the story, and I had to wait for a time in which I could write with full justice to the subject. This is NOT the final chapter, and I promise that at least one, maybe two, chapters will follow.  
  


I have been told many times in my life that courage is not fearlessness, but willingness to face fear. Since the experience that Spirit and I had, I have wondered how many times the heroes that we admire today did the things they did simply because they had no other option. But I digress. The point is that I certainly don't think I was brave. If we had failed on our mission, we wouldn't have seen the light of day again.  
  
The three of us whispered quietly throughout our journey, mainly trying to fill the horrible desolate emptiness around us. My friend walked straight ahead to shorten the time, even passing through the rocks spread across the plain. Her father didn't seem to have feet. Instead he appeared to flow like a bright liquid fountain beside us, at times shooting up and gliding for a few feet, then dropping down again. I asked him what this was for, and he admitted, "I'm a bit restless. I would rather have this over with, but I have to go at your pace."  
  
A sinking feeling was growing somewhere between my stomach and neck. After a while, I realized that it was fear. Several times I repeated, "I am going to encounter a psychopath. He's a lot older, and has hurt me before. He's had practice. He wants to kill me. And I'm going to be ALONE. I am going to encounter a psychopath. He's a-"  
  
Spirit gripped my hand tight enough to hurt. "I do that every day, Spy."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"I expect the Professor told you how my powers manifested. Guess what, Spy, you're not the only one to deal with an attempted murderer."  
  
There was a long silence. "I'm sorry," I began.  
  
"Leave her alone," whispered Mr. Sing. "She tends to sound like this when anxious."  
  
"In fact," continued Spirit bitterly, "I technically AM a murderer, so you really can't come across anyone more frightening than me..." She suddenly changed tone. "Oh Dad, I'm sorry. It's the first time I've seen you for years, and this is how I act. Forgive me, please, Spy. I'm such a jerk."  
  
"You're freaked out. It's okay. We both are. Don't be upset about...that. It was an accident, and was in self-defense anyway. I'll make a deal with you. I'll stop whining if you stop putting yourself down." I breathed in sharply. "We're really close now."  
  
Spirit's father said, "Let's get behind a rock." He stood and peeked around the side towards the building. My friend sat down and leaned against the rock, facing the other way.  
  
"Remember what I've told you," she said to me. I bent down so I could hear her better. "When you go in, we will call the rest to us. We will be waiting for you when you come back out. I promise I won't leave you here. Stryker will be able to make anything happen inside that cell. He can even make it larger on the inside than on the outside, for this is his domain. If you want to be afraid, then be afraid. But remember that I believe in you." With a ghost of a grin, she added, intensely, "Hey, you get a chance at being as b as you want." Reverting to her former seriousness, she said, "God bless you."  
  
I smiled weakly. "Good luck," Mr. Sing said to me, and shook my hand. "It's been a pleasure meeting you. I only have one thing to tell you, before you enter. If you choose to be strong, you will be stronger. If you choose to have hope, it will surely come. If you choose to succeed, success will not escape you." He paused and whispered, "I know you feel terrible about your parents not loving you. It happened to me as well. Someday they will realize your worth."  
  
Okay, I told myself, now or never. I walked from the shelter of the rock to the open space beyond. The cell glowed eerily. My heart was pounding. I touched the wall, and my hand went through. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and walked through.  
  
The only sensations I had were alternate freezing and scorching. For a millisecond I would be enveloped in the most bone-crunching cold imaginable. Then it switched to terrible heat, an extreme of temperature that felt hot enough to melt adamantium. They alternated dozens of time in about five seconds. Then I was through.  
  
My shadowy self seemed pathetically small and dim in the interior. As Spirit had told me would be possible, the inside was huge compared to the exterior. There seemed to be no source of the evil light. It was more bleak and forbidding that the fluorescent lighting that is installed in prisons and mental hospitals. The ceiling seemed to be incredibly high, though it was difficult to judge, since it was all white. The walls also seemed to be long and wide enough for a football stadium. A forest of forbidding columns stretched from floor to ceiling. When I stepped, there was a dull "click" that echoed through the vast openness. "Stryker?" I said with a quaver. Then, more resolutely, I called out again. "Stryker!!"  
  
All the lights suddenly vanished. I was in complete darkness, which was just as bad as excessive light. Stretching my arms out to find a column, I instead hit a smooth wall. I reached out with my other hand in the opposite direction, and at my arms' length was another wall. I could touch the ceiling without standing on tiptoe. "Okay then..." I said to myself. Then I felt the walls closing in on me, getting tighter and tighter. At first I felt a wave of panic, then I remembered that I could go straight through the wall if I needed to. Once the walls had shrunk to the size of a sarcophagus, however, they stopped. "Sorry to disappoint you," I announced, "but I'm not claustrophobic."  
  
A long hiss answered my question. There was now dim lighting, enough to see that snakes, frogs, and bugs slithered and hopped around my feet. One snake began winding itself up my body. I saw its tongue flicker in and out. The slit pupils of the reptiles' red eyes glinted at me. Though it was decidedly creepy, I knew that they weren't real and couldn't really hurt me. "Could you please stop this? I need to talk to you!" I said to the dimness. "Stay right where you are, buddy," I told the snake. It hissed once more then melted away like mist, along with the other animals.  
  
I began to walk forwards. The tiles I was standing on rose up, while the rest of the floor sank until I was miles high over the ground. Wind howled like a hurricane, and thunder boomed ever closer. The narrow pedestal I stood on rocked back and forth, to and fro, first gently, then with increasing violence. Crouching down and gripping the sides as hard as I could, I shrieked, trying to hide my terror, "Enough already! Are you too scared to deal with one little GIRL?" Later I realized that this had been at normal screaming volume. I still don't know why.  
  
The tiles sank back down. In front of me stretched two paths, two open doors. One doorway seemed to lead to a green meadow, with a blue sky, white clouds, and the sounds of birds chirping and streams flowing. Off in the distance was a building, one that looked awfully like the Institute. It just oozed pleasantness and calm. The other doorway seemed to lead to a graveyard, with a dark sky, thorny bushes, and high moans wafting through the air. Fierce dogs and wolves growled at each other, and bats fluttered past the dead trees. With a sigh and another pang of anxiety, I went through the second passage.  
  
Once I was through, it was nothing like it had appeared. It was a long, long corridor, with flickering, sickly green lights. The end was extremely anticlimactic. I came upon a stark white room, with a white chair and desk, and six large black screens. Sitting at the white desk was William Stryker.  
  
I raised an eyebrow, a talent that took me several years of practicing in front of mirrors to develop. "Scaaaaaaaaaaaaary," I drawled, with the most sarcasm that I could inject into a single vowel. I noticed that my voice was now normal. Weird, but I didn't have time to worry about it. My plan was to be as much as a pain in the neck as I knew how, until I figured out what buttons to push to make him REALLY mad at me. Teenagers have never been known for being bad at annoying people. But he was so relaxed and detached that I decided this would be tricky.  
  
"Enough people seem to think so," Stryker replied, calmly.  
  
"Who died and made you God?" Between our arrival in the ghost world, and my entrance into Stryker's cell, I'd had plenty of time to come up with insults.  
  
"I died, little girl. You should have told the Wolverine not to kill me, before it was too late. So sad for you." He leaned back and stretched in the chair.  
  
"You don't know anything about me," I hissed. "You don't even know my name."  
  
"True, but how much do you know about me?"  
  
I gave him a list of what I thought of him, what jerks his ancestors must have been, and how ashamed they'd be to know he was related to them. I finished off saying, "Mutant-hater."  
  
"With pride."  
  
"Murderer."  
  
"Excuse me, but I never succeeded in eliminating anyone. Unfortunately."  
  
I retorted, "Yes you did. You killed the woman that you enslaved, by keeping her drugged, never letting her be her self, even when you sent her to her death. You killed Wolverine's old self, his real self, his past, his identity, and his future. You killed Nightcrawler's ability to survive on his own, destroying his career and making him a fugitive. Jean Gray was forced to sacrifice her life because of you. You killed-"  
  
"I get the idea." I detected a faint hint of irritation. Good.  
  
I sighed, overly dramatic, and began to walk in a wide circle around him. At intervals I shook my head, stuck my tongue out, or did other insulting gestures. I'm not trying to encourage that sort of behavior, but the fact remains that I acted rather immaturely. "Oh, hurting mutants doesn't matter to you. We're not really people, right? Uh huh. But all those soldiers you sent to the mansion, all the ones guarding your Cerebro replica, and all the people that were working on that plan of yours, you sent them to their death."  
  
"Child," he said, in such a way that it was a deadly insult, "soldiers know that they may die, serving their country. It was a decision they made."  
  
I held up my hands in 'surrender' mode. "Whatever. Whatever. It was 'cause of your scheme that they ended up not going home, but that's your call. I thought that murdering your son, Jason, and forcing him down a path that lead to your wife's suicide might bother even you, though." I shook my head and sighed again. "Tsk tsk tsk." I waggled a finger at him, a finger that is not ordinarily used for moral admonishing. It was the finger that tends to be displayed during rush hour, and is never displayed in G rated movies.  
  
He inhaled sharply and said one word. "Explain."  
  
Sore subject, I thought, yep yep. My following speech wasn't completely fair, but remember that my object was to make him angry enough to chase me out of his complex. "The Professor, who you are not worthy to lick the boots of, told me about your most recent encounter. You told him that your son was dead. What killed him? When you destroyed all humanity in him, obliterating his chances of normality, and you taught him the meaning of pure, unjust hatred. Jason shouldn't have done what he did, but if you had treated him like a son, he would've acted like one. If you loved him, he would've loved you."  
  
"You know nothing about it," he growled, with teeth gritted together.  
  
I shook my head condescendingly. "I don't? When my parents discovered that I had mutant powers, they wrote me out of their will, destroyed all the pictures of me in the house, and moved after dumping me at the Institute. I think I might have a little insight on how a suddenly reviled and feared child feels. But YOU don't care. I should've known that you're too much of a slime-encrusted, parasitic nematode to let anything like prejudice, abuse, and attempted genocide bother your noble soul." In my mind, I envisioned a little thermometer that indicated his anger rising, degree by degree. Soon it would be time to try making it explode. "When will I stop being so naïve?" I asked rhetorically.  
  
He rose from the chair, and began walking towards me, trying to back me into a wall. I kept going sideways, trying not to sweat too hard. "I may not know your name. I do not know how you made it here. I am not particularly interested. But this is MY domain. It goes by my rules. So far I have been patient, but remember that I can subject you to your worst nightmares, over and over, for as long as I want. So I'd advise you to leave my personal history alone. For your own good."  
  
I started laughing. That hadn't been planned, but I honestly couldn't stop. The incongruity of the whole situation had just struck me. Here I was, in a ghost world, transporting myself supernaturally, sent on an essential mission by my dearest friend, enduring various terrors to reach this point, just to insult and demean a late middle-aged man. Also, sheer nervousness made me seek relief in laughter. Though I had never meant to laugh at Stryker, it proved to be the most terrible wound on his pride that I could manage. It set the fuse off, igniting the gunpowder I had piled up.  
  
I hooted and shrieked for about thirty seconds in front of his disbelieving eyes. Then I stopped, for he began to fume incoherently. This grew to a flood of sound, full of four-letter words and descriptions of his thoughts on my genetics, pedigree, chances on living to a respectable adulthood, and various unpleasant things he planned to do to me. I tried to back out through the wall. To my dismay, I couldn't pass through. The only escape for me was the way I came. Hiding my panic under a cloak of bravado, I shrieked, "Remember me as Spy, you insult to scum!"  
  
Sprinting out the door, I heard his shouts come after me. I am a decent runner, and I was confident that I could outdo a (to me at that age) old man. A cliff rising in front of me out of thin air stopped me in my tracks. When I shut my eyes, though, and charged straight ahead, I felt only a sensation of freezing cold. Other obstacles came, water, fire, ice, phantom lions and tigers threatening to tear me apart, but if I forced myself to disbelieve in the illusions, I could pass through. Some made me feel prickling, electrical, or burning heat as I ran, but there was no lasting damage done. The distance I'd covered earlier seemed a LOT farther this time around. My legs began to burn with acid, my heart began to thump, and I had to gasp for air. Slowing down was out of the question. Once or twice I felt him come up right behind me, but I put on an extra burst of speed to get away. At one point he even caught my ponytail, yanking several chunks out by the roots. When I felt that I was absolutely done for and could not run another inch, I came up to a solid wall. My heart lifting, I dashed through.  
  
The brightness nearly blinded me. I ran for a few more feet with my eyes blurred and half closed, then collapsed onto the rock. When I'd stopped hyperventilating, I opened my eyes and began to pay attention. At first I could only see light, overpowering light. It was far from the cold, inhospitable whiteness of the 'office' I had just run from. This was a celestial glory, pure and strong and good. As my eyes began to focus, I could see a dark shape in the distance. The figure shouted, "Too scared of me to come on your own? You are all cowards! Do any of you dare to face me single-handed? None of you could take me away from here! I'm invincible here! You dead mutants are just wasting your time!" I recognized Stryker's voice.  
  
A warm hand grasped my arm and pulled me to stand. "Good job," whispered a voice. "You're a brave girl." I turned my head and looked into a face that was almost too beautiful to bear. It showed the same white glow that Spirit's father had shone, but this was a female face.  
  
I coughed feebly and tried to inflate my lungs so I could speak. I asked, "Who are you?"  
  
She smiled. "Myra's mother. Now come with me. I know where she is." And with that she lifted me up in her arms, flying out and away from the crowd of what I now knew was a legion of angels, Silent Spirit's angels. Lily Sing set me down again next to Spirit and Spirit's father.  
  
"Hi, Spy," whispered Spirit, smiling, but with tears running down her cheeks.  
  
"Hey," I replied.  
  
In the distance I could hear the ghost challenging the multitude. A lone woman's voice cried out, "William Stryker, I have defeated you before and I can do it again!"  
  
"That's Ms. Gray," Spirit told me. "She volunteered take him on."  
  
"What are they going to do?" I asked.  
  
Mr. Sing said, "It will be Jean's job to try to persuade him to come quietly. If he won't, she will begin the...process needed to take him to where he belongs. He will have to be forced into the world of spirits at rest, and stop being a restless ghost."  
  
Mrs. Sing continued explaining to me. "The rest of us are here to destroy this void, and try to heal the damage that he has done to the minds and bodies of your teachers, who are now all asleep."  
  
"How..." I began. Then I stopped and asked them, "Does this fall into the classified category too?"  
  
"I'm afraid it does," the female Sings told me.  
  
My friend added, "It's time to go now, Spy. It's now in their hands."  
  
Her father shook his head. "Not ours. Never ours. We follow the commands that we are given. But goodbye, Spy. It has been a pleasure. I do not fear any longer that my daughter will be lonely."  
  
"We'll ask Myra about you," Mrs. Sing assured. "If you feel a need for parental love, ever, just remember that we love you for the wonderful friend you are."  
  
"Thank you," I said, gratefully. "So what do we do now, SS?"  
  
She gripped my hand with hers. "Just visualize the Mansion. As before, keep a hold on my psyche while you reach yours out to the destination. Remember the teachers, our classes, Friday movie nights, the woods outside, the pictures on the walls, and all the other things that make it home. Goodbye, Mom and Dad. See you in a while."  
  
"A while. Not too short, not too long." I wasn't sure which parent said this, for I was concentrating too hard on my clairvoyance. I thought about getting inside my body again, and leaving this place forever. A powerful, warm rush flowed over the two of us. The last thing I heard there was a victory cry, somewhere between a shout and a chord of singing. The last thing I saw there was the angels rushing with unspeakable beauty in every direction, and a sudden blaze of light that burst from where Stryker had stood.  
  
Then a roar of wind and water filled our ears, and darkness filled our eyes, and we knew no more of that ghostly land. 


	13. She Lives

Spy and I are a little sad to see this tale end, for this is the final chapter. It has been a great experience, and many thanks to my most loyal readers, shukuchi and Crystal113, and to greygoalie for putting me on your favorite authors list on the strength of this one story. Do not despair, for I already have plans for a sequel, and possibly other stories about Silent Spirit to come after that. There were other people that Spirit was very dear to, and they would also like me to help them publish works about her later life.

"Angeles" and the X-men universe still do not belong to me

....................................................

My first sense to return was my sense of touch. I felt a smooth sheet above me, softness below me, and I sensed cool fingers around my hand. Then I could dimly hear a voice, repeating the same two words over and over, very quietly. "Come back. Come back. Come back." The crisp scent of frost fluttered around my face. A trickle of my telepathy dribbled into my brain, telling me that someone nearby...was worried about me. I opened my eyes to see who it was.  
  
"Jim?"  
  
He started and jumped off the chair he had been sitting on, sticking his hands behind his back. "Why did you go without telling me?" Jim blurted out.  
  
"What..." I began, sitting up. I looked around me, seeing that we were in the infirmary. Spirit was lying on the bed next to mine. "How long have we been gone?"  
  
"Two weeks," Jim said. "You jerk! I've been waiting for you to wake up. It was like you guys were in a coma."  
  
"Oh. Sorry that I didn't say goodbye, it's just that I couldn't sleep, and Spirit had a nightmare, and she wanted to put an end to it all ASAP." I was trying to hide my surprise. Sure, I knew that Jim would've missed us, but I'd had no idea that he would stay by my side and wait for me. What surprised me even more was that this made me happy. A strange feeling rose from my stomach to my throat.  
  
When I saw Spirit adjust her sunglasses, I immediately opened up my telepathy. Her first thought was, Spy, I knew you could do it! She got out of the bed and smiled at Jim, doing a double thumbs up. When I told her that we'd been gone two weeks, she just nodded. Jim gave her a hi-five and helped me up. As if in response to some intangible signal, she turned around, spinning Jim along with her. I also turned.  
  
Professor Xavier had come in the door and was wheeling towards us. The bandages that had formerly swathed his face were gone, and he looked the same as ever before, wearing his kind smile. The other teachers followed him, every one of them looking healthy, cheerful, and well rested. Spirit and I found ourselves hugged, kissed, and shaken by the hand by various members of the faculty. Logan even ruffled Spirit's hair, and said a kind word to me for the first time since the Dancing Incident. Everyone congratulated us and praised us. "How did you get better?" I asked, amazed.  
  
"The accounts all seem to match," replied Professor Xavier. "We all fell asleep in spite of ourselves, and when we awoke we were healed."  
  
Storm smiled. "None of us remembered our last dream, but all is now well. Thanks to you two."  
  
I thought to Spirit, Actually, I spent the whole time being immature and annoying. They should give their thanks to you, Spirit.  
  
She shook her head. We did it together.  
  
X-Ray walked in, having just returned from a coffee break, and pronounced us free to go back to ordinary school life. Kurt insisted, though, that I tell the story. I sat back down on the bed it with my mind, also broadcasting Spirit's thoughts to them. Most of our audience chose a perch on a nearby chair while they 'listened'. Jim, however, sat down next to me. They reacted properly throughout. At the end, the Professor asked the two of us mentally, Do you wish for us to tell the rest of the school?"  
  
My first thought was, Okay, but Spirit's answer was, No.  
  
Why not? I asked her.  
  
To start with, a lot of them would have a tough time believing us. I also don't want them to think of us as these supernatural beings that saved all their lives. I just don't want to be whispered about, saying 'Those are the girls that destroyed Stryker's ghost.' We would be less human, in their eyes. Less of friends, more of magical saviors." She shook her head. I'm sorry, Spy, if this disappoints you. But I'm the kind of person that prefers my good deeds to be anonymous.  
  
After thinking it over for a while, I gave in. Initially I suggested that we come up with a fake, but plausible, reason for our withdrawals. Both Kurt and Spirit, however, insisted that we shouldn't lie. The Professor ended up telling the rest of the students a partial truth about the teachers being struck by a strange 'illness' and the two of us also catching it, but we eventually overcame it and were cured. Considering how many strange things happen in our lives, most of the teens were satisfied with the explanation. A few, particularly Rogue, wanted specifics, but the teachers just told them that it had been unpleasant and they didn't want to talk about it.  
  
Spirit and I went back to our usual lives. At first it seemed that everything was the same as it had been before, but then I began to notice a change in my best friend. She became less open than before. If I asked her something, she would tell me, but she no longer volunteered information. Also, she seemed to sleep much less than before the haunting. When I was half-asleep, she would still be reading in the dark. When I woke up, she would already be dressed. Yet she never seemed sleepy during the day. I discovered that now she would be more talkative, metaphorically speaking, when it was dark outside. Silent Spirit thoroughly became a creature of the night. It seemed to suit her mutations, all of which, though not at all evil, were associated with darkness. This change did not affect my feelings for her; in fact I was closer to her than in the previous months. But I began to recognize that, more so than with the rest of us, there was something in her that was not quite human. She had something that reminded me of snow in moonlight, of peaceful graves strewn with lilies, of dancing whirlwinds of crimson leaves in autumn, and of the wild gentleness of quiet seashore. Oh dear, I'm getting way too poetic. But I miss her so.  
  
One night, a Saturday night not long after my fourteenth birthday, I woke up and she wasn't there. I felt around for her with my mind, but she was not in the building. Casting my clairvoyance around, I learned that she was in the woods surrounding the mansion. I'm not sure exactly why I went out to join her. I just wanted to talk to her, even though it was past midnight. Putting on a pair of sneakers and sweatshirt against the chilly November air, I snuck out of the Institute with my flashlight.  
  
She was in the tree house; a small rickety thing built a year ago. It wasn't much more than a platform with three walls and one missing wall so you could dangle your legs off the side. That particular tree was easy to climb. After her broken arm hand mended, Spirit could clamber like a cat. Even without the flashlight, her silver hair was easily visible. Why are you up here? I asked her as I pulled myself up to the tree house.  
  
Thinking and listening, she answered, scratching her gray fur. She was only wearing flannel pajamas and a pair of moccasins. Could you please turn off the flashlight?  
  
I did so. Aren't you cold? I asked. Even with the sweatshirt I felt pretty cool.  
  
Fur has its perks, she thought. Do you know what I'm listening to?  
  
Somebody talking to you?  
  
My friend shook her head and gave a smile of utter contentment, hugging her knees. I found out that angels really do sing. Her chest moved in a sigh, and she shut her eyes. I no longer complain that I can't hear music. This music is even better. Opening them, she added regretfully, I wish I could hear your normal voice, though.  
  
Mmmm... I agreed. Yesterday I found out that Jim has started to like me a little more. His emotions show that he views me as a friend, and thinks of me as one, but he would like to try seeing if we could manage a stronger relationship than that...He just doesn't know how I would react.  
  
Why don't you tell him and spare him the agony?  
  
I shook my head. I'm not quite sure how I feel about him myself. I want to work that out first. You know, Spirit, life seems too complicated sometimes. I'm glad you're here to help me out.  
  
She hugged me. Spy, I want you to call me Myra. Only my family and last best friend have ever called me that. I love you more than all the other people here, and am closest to you out of everyone alive. Call me Myra from now on.  
  
I'm being silly, I thought as a tear welled up in one eye. I wiped it away. You're the first person to hug me since my powers manifested.  
  
Myra laughed silently, from pure happiness. I predict that I won't be the last.  
  
I feel so bad for you, though, Myra, since on top of ordinary mutant problems, you must miss hearing and talking to us all. You can only do it indirectly. It must be lonely.  
  
Spy, spy, when will you figure out that I'm never alone?  
  
Then I had one of my rare visions of the future. For a moment I saw mutants joining in harmony with songs that my friend would write. I saw a room full of people laughing and cheering when a man read an amendment giving mutants equal protection under the law. I saw victory marches of people of all ages and some with wild, monstrous appearances. And I heard a gunshot and screams, and saw people crying as a casket was lowered into the ground.  
  
I rubbed my eyes and decided that I really needed to go to bed, since I thought that I was half-asleep and starting to have weird dreams.  
  
In later years I realized that this had truly been a vision, for everything I had seen did come to pass. Myra became a major leader of the Mutant Freedom Movement, though under a different name and in disguise. By peaceful means we managed to gain our rights, and mutants across America celebrated our victory. However, this enraged some anti-mutant factions, a member of which murdered my dearest friend. My last sight of Myra was of her peaceful face but cold and bloody body, lying dead on the street.  
  
But when I think of her and try to picture Myra Sing, I do not see a lifeless corpse. Instead, I see a young girl, with dark eyes and moonlit hair, who gazed with rapt eyes into the great beyond, who heard music attuned to a the voices of infinity, and who lives.  
  
Angels, answer me: Are you near if rain should fall?  
  
Am I to believe you will rise to calm a storm?  
  
For so great a treasure words will never do  
  
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give...  
  
Here, all too soon the day!  
  
Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow  
  
I should know heaven has her way – each one given memories to own  
  
Angels, all could be, should you move both earth and sea  
  
Angels, I could feel all those dark clouds disappearing...  
  
Even as I breathe, comes an angel to their keep  
  
Surely, if this is, promises are mine to give you, mine to give... 


End file.
